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SPEECH 



HON. GAERETT DAYIS. 



OF K E :Ds T U C K Y 



COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE; 



A'OJCH HE GIVES A SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY 
OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



DELIVERED 

IN THE SEXATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 
FEBRUARY IG & 17, 18 0^. 



WASHINGTON: 

TOWERS & CO., PRINiK:; 

1864. 






West. r-ea. Hibfc- Boo. 



SPEECH 

I 

OF 

HOK GARRETT DAYIS, OF KY, 

I^f 

COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE; 

IX WHICH HE GIVES A SKETCH OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF 
MASSACHUSETTS. 



DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBKCJARY 16 & IT, 1864 



The Senate having under consideration the bi!I to equalize the pay of soldiers, Mr. DAVIS 
said : 

Mr. President: A great man once asked tbe question Avhat a public man was 
-.voi'th who would not stand or fall by a great principle. I expand tbat question, 
:ind I ask, wliat is any man worth who will not stand or fall by a great principle? 
Sir, I have that amount of value at least. Some gentlemen on this floor in the 
course of former debates have said truly that I was fond of rec;.irriEg to the past. 
When I make a retrospect of the past, even for only a few years, how great and melan- 
choly is tlie contrast with the present I Then we had peace, fraternity, unity, pros- 
perity, power, and the respect of the'nations of the world. That retrospect gives me 
a mournful pleas-ure. I love to dwell upon those halcyon times, times which I sin- 
cerely ap[irehend have left this country to return no more, at least so long as my- 
self, a much older man than yon, and you, sir, [Mr. Howe in the chair,] shall be 
living. 

Mr. President, I have seen somewhere faction defined to be "the madness 
of the many for the benefit of the few." Parties are inherent, and indeed inevitable, 
in all popular Governments, and generally arise in all Governments. When par- 
ties are fount d on diverse opinions of principles and measures of policy, and their 
eifects u])on the Government and the country, and the differences of their probable 
effects are investigated and maiutained with truth and candor, they are useful in 
forming a correct iiublic opinion, in repressing maladministration, and in upholding 
liberty and the true spirit of the Government. But when these parties turn awaj' 
from truth and reason, disregard fundamental principles, and support men not be- 
cause of their fitness for office, their virtues, intelligence, and fidelity to public 
^^ust3 an<l duty; anil measures not because they are wise and just and promotive ol 
the public. ir<><'<l, but, because thej' promise to subserve the ends, the ambition, 
and passiims <>f individuals, or to attain or bold power, party then becomes faction. 

In the fir.-<t and jturer ages of most fre-; Governments the people generally divide 
into partirx. hut the selfishness and arts of the leaders and the credulity of the 
masses soon cause them to degenerate into factions. Country then becomes absorbed 
by party, truth and reason by falsehood at;d passion, and the public good and glory 
by partisan contests and triumphs. Then there is enacted the "madness of the many 
for the ber>(-fit of the few." The masses surrender their judgment, their will, and 
their conduct to their leaders, and become their followers and slaves, and ingore 
wholly tli>' merits of men and measures. Party fealty, the esprit de corps of party, 
becomes •' -trongest bond among men, dominates their opinions, lives, and acte, 
and dire . 'te de?tiny of the nation. Each succeeding faction becomes more venal, 
corrupt, :i;' I ! •-'■Hijite than its predecessor, their conflicts becomes fiercer, the lig- 
aments of -f i' •;■ i'c 'oo-icned, law and order are disregarded, private pursuits and 
industry 'i property is seized upon by rapacious armed men, liberty and 

life bec" .w^'s the people, growing weary and disgusted with the 'eve'r- 

recurrir';- . . ;e:<.ding turmoil, for a modicum of tranquillitj' and security at 

length accept a despotism and a master The positions here stated are all proved 



by the enccessive factions in ancient Rome, ofMariu?, ofSylla, of Pom pey, Julius Cffisar 
and Crassus, of Antonj-, Lepidus, and Octavius, and the natural and inevitable cot- 
summatioii, the establishment of an imperial despotism by Octavius Ca?sar. CorroV- 
orative examples could be readily adduced from the history of many othes countries, 
ancient and modern, as -well as the present deplorable "condition of the United 
States; ai.d the measures, purposes, and spirit of the parties North and South which 
now rule them, give mournful assurance that they too may add another and incom- 
parably the strongest of the numerous examples which the enemies of free institutions 
are so fond of citing, to prove that well ordered and permanent self-government i? 
im{)OJsiblf to be achieved by any people. 

It seems to me that the decline of the great Republic has commenced iu its early 
immnturiij-, and has progressed and is progressing with a rapiditj' beyond all pre- 
cedent. 1 never indulged the dream that it could be immortal, peqietual; but \ 
clung to the faith that it would have its periods of active youth, of vigorous man 
hood, and s'>und old age; and that each period would be measured bj^ centuries. If 
its destiny should be thus early to fall, it will not only be the most untimely but the 
noblest ruin that was ever mourned by mankind, blasting, beyond all comparison, 
for the present and through long-coming ages, more of the world's hope. 

I neverfor a moment doubted that the rebellion would be suppressed, and when the 
news of the disastrous battle of Dull Run reached my town, and there struck dowi. 
the spirit of every other Union nian, 1 expressed to them my conviction that thai 
reverse would arouse a spirit which would call out the entire resources of the loyal 
States; and although they might be more slow in being made available, they were 
so superior in force and endurance and all material wealth, that the rebels must be 
overwhelmed, and that consummation was only a question of time. I have held to 
that opinion without ever having a moment of doubt. 

I came to the Senate soon after the President and the two Houses of Congres? 
h^d with unprecedented unanimity declared to the people of the United States and 
to the world in the clearest language the principles and ends upon and for whidi 
the war against tile rebels should be conducted. I put my trust and. faith in thoso 
declarations and in the men who made them, and while they were observed 1 no: 
only supported their war measuies, but gave them personally my fullest confidence. 
But a new policy for conducting the war, and essentially different from that previ- 
ously iiunounced by the President and by Congress, began to be evolved. The Presi 
dent has since fully developed and is now fearfully executing it. When he violatec 
the many and distinct and emphatic pledges upon which and by which he was 
bound to conduct the war, for one, my confidence in him died to live no more. Bli: 
what I consider to be the great perfidy of the President has n<)t and never will 
cause me to hesitate to support the Government and the Union of these States ir. 
this civil war. I have voted for every measure to strengthen the executive aim that 
I deemed to be constitutional, and for some about which, both as to constitutional- 
ity and policy, I entertained serious doubts, and this because of the great stress ot 
the country, and the desire of the Executive to have them enacted into laws. 1 
shall continue this course of oflicial conduct, not for the President cr the party ir. 
power, but for the Constitution which I have sworn to support, for tlie rebtoratioi 
of the Union of the Stales, and, for the common and permanent welfare- of uiy 
count r3-. 

It is this great civil war and its continuance that has brought the Pn-sident to 
enoinjous abuses and usuipatiois of power, and the people to submit lo them so 
passively. If the war could be closed speedily, they, too, would soon come to an 
end; but so long as it continues, the only hope of their reformation is in the electiot 
of another President, and here arises a mighty motive with those in jiower and 
offici', and in the receipt of large emoluments, for it^ continuance. It seems to me. 
too, that the rebels will rally all their energies for a decisive struggle in the coming 
campaign. 1 do not doubt that their great armies will be routed and driven froir 
the field; the mass, however, will fight to extermination before they will submit 
to the humiliating terms that have been prescribed for them by the President. 
The rebel armies, unable to maintain great campaigns, will break uji into smaP 
bodies, and from their swamps and mountain fastnesses will carry on a desolating 
pai titan war for a longer period tiian Circassia did against Russia; and before i" 
can be terminated by their subjugation, constitutional government and populiir lib 
erty thronghout the United States may have perished, not for a time, but forever. 1 
have never feared, nor have 1 now the least apprehension of the perriianent over 
throw of free institutions anywhere in the United States, by Jeflerson \)a\\» and 
his government; but I am bcjet bv the gloon.iest apprehensions that it Mr. Lincoln 
M re-elected, or some other man Laving his principles, policy, and sohenie of govern 



raent should be \m successor, tliey will perish by him and his government, or by 
stronger men who will rise np and thrust them from their places. 

No men ever charged with the possession and administration of a free Govern- 
ment devised so bold and so extensive a scheme foi' its revolution, or were so prompt 
and successful in its execution, as the men who hold possession of the Government 
of the United States. The strong and fixed attachment of the loyal rotates to the 
Union; the general aversion of the people of the free States to slavery, and the 
fanatical and_ active hostility of a large sectional party to it; the inauguration of 
the rebellion 'exclusively by slave States, and the absorbing devotion of large por- 
tions oi their people to their peculiar institution; the magnitude of the military 
power and resources which the rebels brought into the field to suj)port their revolt 
and achieve their independence; the enormous armies, equipments, and supplies 
■which the United States had to organize to meet successfully their formidable enemy ; 
and the fierceness with which the war has been waged on both sides, have givea 
to ambitious men in power such an oj)portunity as never occurred before in any 
country to trample down the Constitution, laws, and liberties of the people, and to 
seize upon indefinite arbitrary power. Backed by a resistless military force rami- 
fied all over the loyal States.'the assumptions of power by those in authority have 
been in proportion to the dimensions of the rebellion, and the people, confounded 
by the great and threatening danger to the Union and the extent and audacity of 
those usurpations, have given but little heed to their Constitution, rights and liber- 
ties, thinking that when the terrific storm had passed they would resume their 
wonted position, security, and vitality. Fatal dehision ! Those inappreciable bles- 
sings of Government, once yielded by a people, are generally lost forever; they are 
never regained except at the cost of countless sufferings and seas of blood The 
duly that devolved upon the people in this great exigency required high intelli- 
gence, viitue, courage, and fortitude; it was at the same time to put down the re- 
bellion, and to hold all their agents, civil and militarj-, strictly and firmly within 
the limits of tfheir constitutional and legal powers. Had that great duty been per- 
formed and the civil and military affairs of the country been wisely administered 
the rebellion would ere this have been suppressed, the Union and peace restored, 
and our institutions strengthened and enshrined anew in the hearts of our country- 
men and. more strongly commended to the acceptance of mankind. The best that 
can now be done is to occupy a? much as possible of that safe anchorage. 

Political liberty in England was of Saxon birth. It fell temporarily by the victory 
of iVilliam the Corjqueror at Hastings; but the Saxons, who were still much the 
larger portion of the people, were deeply imbued with its spirit. It soon burst 
forth vigorously against the tyranny of tlie feudal system and the Normans, and 
made brave and unceasing conflict with the Piantagenets for their ancient rights; 
and the sturdy barons, under the feeble John, achieved their reconquest from the 
throne. This contest between parliamentary privilege and popular liberty on the 
one side, and kingly prerogative on the other, was resumed and continued 
throughout the reigns of the succeeding Piantagenets and all the Tudors. The 
kingi claimed the essential powers of Government, both executive and legisla- 
tive, as of their prerogative; the Commons of England asserted as of thejr 
privilege as the third estate, representing the people, that no laws could be enact- 
ed or suspended without their concurrence, and that all the rights, privilegeo, 
and liberties founded under their Saxon kings, and restored by Magna Charta, were 
the bin bright of every Englishman, This great contest, extending through centu- 
ries, was taken up by Hampden and Cromwell and their heroio associates, and 
brought to a final issue in favor of the privileges of Parliament and the liberties of 
'the people i.a the reign of Charles I. They were defined more clearly and estab- 
lished more firndy by various acts of Parliament, passed in the reigns of Charles II, 
William of Orange, and at the ■accession of George I; and they have ever since 
been as firmly uioored in the British constitution and Government as the isle itself 
in its ocean bed. 

But in our free and limited Government of a written Constitution, President 
Lincoln and his party, in utter disregard of its limitations and restrictions, are 
making for him as President claim to the s'Jime boundless and despotic powers, 
executive and legislative, which the Piantagenets, the Tucois, and the first Stuarts 
contended for in England as appertaining to the kingly prerogative, through so 
rnauy generations of convulsive and bloody struggle, and which they ultimately 
lost, alter the longest, truest, most steady and heroic devotion to their rights and 
liberties by the people of England that is to be found in the history of mankind. 
Those inestimable rights, liberties, privilege?, and institutions, secured forever, itia 
to be hoped, to that people by tlieir appreciating sense, manly virtues, and iaviaoi- 



6 

b!e fortitude, our ancestors brought with them to this continent; and the founders 
of our Government thought they had secured them to the people of the United 
States bej'ond all changes and cliances, by setting them forth as fundamental prin- 
ciples in their written form of Government; and yet the President has seized upon 
the opportunity of this great rebellion to subvert them for the time, and if he is 
re-eleuteJ to the Presidency that subversion will become complete and final. His 
overthrow, or that of the Constitution and popular liberty, is inevitable; and it is 
yet in the power of the American people to decide this great issue in favor of Con- 
stitution and liberty, if they will throw off their lethargy and arouse themselves 
to the most important work' that has ever been intrusted to man. 

Mr. President, no Government could be organized in this enlightened age without 
adequate provisions for the protection of private property. It is one of the great 
ends for which society and all government are formed, and consequently it is one 
of the prominent objects that was attempted to be secured by the Constitution of 
the United States. The fifth article of tlie Amendments expresses the principle of 
the Constitution upon that point in clear and precise language. I will read it: 

"No peraon shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamoas crime, unless on a pre- 
sentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in th« land or naval forces, or in 
the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor s^hall any person be sub- 
ject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; ror shall be compelled in any 
criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without 
due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensalion." 

Mr. President, some gentlemen assume the most extraordinary and absurd posi- 
tion tliat negroes are not and cannot be the subject of property. Our Constitution 
recognizes propert}' in slaves. The courts of the United States, which by the Con- 
stitution are expressly empowered to decide all cases arising under that instrument, 
uniformly and in numerous cases have recognized property in Afi-iean slaves. There 
is not a civilized country of the earth, where this question ever arose, whose high 
judicial tribunals have not sustained the same position, slavery and property in 
slaves have been upheld by the laws, usages, and practice of nations of the highest 
civilization frotn before tiie first dawn of historj*. Tiiis question has been made, 
not only in the Supreme Court of the United States, but also repeatedlj' in the cir- 
cuit courts of the United States for Ohio and Michigan, and in one case at least the 
honorable Senator from Michigan [Mr. Howard] appeared as counsel. The courts 
sustained, not only the right of property in the owners of slaves, but also that 
where they were fugitive, and escaped into other States, the owner or his agent 
could go into that State, and, against its express law to the contrary, seize 'hia 
slave and take him back ; and if he was resisted by anj- persons to the loss of the 
slave, or they aided the slave to escape, the owner could sue the persons interfering 
in the United States cotirts, and recover from them both the reasonable value of 
the slave and a penalty for their interference. The man who contends in the 
United States that African slaves are not and cannot be the subject of property is 
71071 compos Tiimtii^. 

In relation to this matter of property in slaves as connected with my own State, 
how does it stand? We have in Kentucky about, I will say in round numbers, 
two hundred and fifty thousand negro slaves. Before the commencement of this 
rebellion they were worth fiCOO average at least. A colleague of mine in the other 
House, who is my near neigiibor and among the largest owners of slaves in the 
State, estimates their value according to an appraisement which he has made of 
some that he placed upon a cotton farm in the South, men, women, and children, 
at $800 a head ; but a moderate and reasonable estimate would be $600 average. 
Two hundred and fift}' thousand slaves at that rate would be worth $150,000.000.. 
That is one-fourth part of the aggregate wealth of the State of Kentucky. "What 
does this measure and the series of cognate measure? in relation to the same subject 
contemplate? To deprive the people of the State of Kentucky of fl 50,000,000 of 
their projierty which is guarantied to them not only by their own constitution and 
laws, but also by the Constitution of the United States and by all the decisions, 
both Federal and State, of all the courts in the United States, I believe, with one 
solitary exception in a State court of ^Wisconsin, and which has been properly re- 
versed by the revisory judgment of a United States court. Is it not a question of 
a good deal of magnitude to my constituencj- whether the Pi-esident or Congress 
shall, directlj' or indirectly, deprive them of that amount of properly without any 
compensation ? But, sir, the Congresss of the United States, nor the President, have 
not a particle of jurisdiction or power over the subject to the extent of liberating 
slaves. Neither has any military officer any more rightful authority to set free a 
slave in the State of Kentucky than has the levy court of the county of Washington. 



Mr. WILKINSON rose. 

Mr. DAVIS. I would rather tlie Senator would reserve his questions until I get 
thi'ough, and then I will answer them with great pleasure; but I prefer hot to be 
interrupted. I say it most courteously to the 1 onorable Senator. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER, (Mr. Howe in the chair.) The Senator from Ken- 
tucky is entitled to the floor. 

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. President, we have a peculiar and unique Government. We 
have a Government established by a written Constitution. That Constitution is the 
law of our Government, and limits all its power and authority. It has been deci- 
ded agaiu and again by the Supreme Court, and it is the plainest dictate of reason 
and common intelligence, much less of legal learning, that the Government of the 
United States cannot claim, or exercise without usurpation, a solitary power that is 
not conferred upon it by that sole law of its creation. The Constitution was formed 
by separate, distinct, and independent political sovereignties, each one of those 
sovereignties within its own limits and jurisdiction being clothed with all politic&l 
power. They saw the necessity of a common national Government, and conS':- 
quently of a surrender of some of the highest powers of political sovereignty to 
that national Government for the purpose of securing the welfare of the whoi« 
people of the United States. This surrender of power was almost mainly of the 
character of those that appertain to the foreign relations of the States or their re- 
lations with each other. It is one of the essential features of the system that the 
domestic institutions, laws, and polity of each State were not surrendered to the 
General Government, but were retained almost wholly and exclusively \>y the 
States. 

Now, Mr. President, in the face of the guaranties in the Constitution which 1 
have read, that private property «hall not be taken except for public use, and by 
judgment of law and upon compensation being made to the owner, how can the 
Government of the United States, in any of it^ departments, seize and appropriate 
private property for any olher object than public use, public appropriation, public 
application of the property to some purpose and action of Government? And when 
it takes private property, even for such ends, how can it presume to take that 
property, in the face of this provision of the Constitution, without making, or ic- 
teading to make, compei.sation to the owners for it? 

- Mr. President, an error is committed very often in this day, and I think it is for 
the want of a recurrence to and an examination of the essays and explanations ct 
and that were contemporaneous with the Constitution. Gentlemen attempt to ana- 
lyze, to define, to enlarge the powers of our Government by comparing it with 
other Governqients. As I said before, our Government is unique. It is formed by a 
written instrument. That instrument speaks for itself. It was formed upon the gen- 
eral principle of not giving plenary powers to the national Government, but only eucn 
as should be delegated to it by the States, and not to be obligatory upon anj- State 
that did not ratify it. This principle has been often announced by the Supreme 
Court, tiiat only such powers are vested in the General Government as are exproeely 
delegated by the language of the Constitution itself or by the necessary, reasona- 
ble, and proper implication of that language. A leading feature of the Goveni- 
ment is that all the powers vested in the President by the Constitution are enn- 
merated in the second and third sections of the second article; and he is not clothed 
with a solitary incidental power, but the whole of that unnumbered and indefinite 
class of powers are vested by the express and unequivocal language of the OonBt;- 
tution itself in Congress, and that only to the extent that they are necessary and 
proper to enable Congress, or the President, or the judiciary, or any other depar: 
ment or officer of the Government to execute the powers with which they are ex- 
pressly clothed. Congressmay assume and exerci'^e itself at pleasure any of those inc - 
dental powers, but the President or any other officer not one of them until author- 
ized by a law of Congress. This Government of limited authority is also by express 
provisions restricted or forbid to exercise sundry enumerated powers; and there is 
also a direct provision that the express restriction of any powers to the Generai 
Government shall have no effect whatever to grant it any additional powers or to 
enlarge those that are vested by the Constitution, 

Sir, what is another general principle of our Government? That all the powers 
of Government established by the language of the Constitution are expressly in the 
aiaia parted and divided among three departments, ani the powers that are to be 
exercised by each are expressly enumerated. Then when a question arises as to the 
treneral proposition of the extent of the powers of the Federal Government, or of 
their investiture in what deportment or ofiSicer, there is but one rule of eonstmc 
tioB, and that rule is the language of the Go-stitutio-i itself, and the condition oi 



the country and public affairs when it was aiioptecl. There is no other system of 
government under the sua that can enlighten legislators or the President or courts 
upon such questions. You may resort to the Brkish Government as it then existed, 
and tile writings of publicists when the Constitution was adopted, to ascertain the 
meaning, iiii,>ort, and force of terms of art or political science that are introduced 
into the Constitution, but beyond that you cannot have reference to any Govern- 
ment, not for the purpose of illustrating or ascertaining what are the powers 
of the Government of the United Slates, or in what departments and magistracies 
they ma}- be deposited, but on these questions you have to look to the Constitution 
alone. 

Sir, in construing the Holy Scripture you might as well recur to the Koran, to 
the Puranas of the Hindoos, to the system of Zoroaster, to th» moral precepts 
taught by Confucius or Seneca or any other great heathen moralist, with as much 
propriety as you may resort to other systems of government to determine and 
ascertain what are the powers and what are th? de[)ositories of the powers of our 
Government. Our Constitution is our political Bible, and as such is as nmch dis- 
tinct and isolated from the constitutions and government-s of all other countries as 
the Christian's Bible is from all otiier systems of religion. 

Tiieii, sir, I come to this other cardinal principle, which I lay down as an incon- 
trovertible axiom, that wherever the Constitution of the United States by express 
language establishes and ve?ts a power of government, or guaranties a right, liberty, 
or )n"ivileg6 to the citizen, such provision of the Constitution cannot be suspended 
01' abrogated, restricted or impaired in its operation by any implication arising 
from any other of the provisions of the Constitution. I also state this further prin- 
ciple as axiomatic: that the amendments to the Constitution being the last expressed 
will of the people upon the subject of their Government, like amendments to all 
laws and constitutions, if there be any conflict espress or by implication between 
t!ie original text and the amendments, the amendments are to prevail, and are to 
give the supreme and the undoubted law upon the controverted point. Then, sir, 
1 I'ecur to the Constitution and read the provision guarantying the rights of j^rivate 
propei't}' in the most explicit language — one of the cardinal ends for Vhich this and 
all other legitimate Government was created, without which express guarantee of 
property and other inalienable rights and liberties the people of the United States 
were not satisfied in the first instance with the Constitution ; and I assert that there 
are no other express provisions overruling them, or conflicting to any extent wiEh 
t'.iem: and that the}' cannot be nullified, restricted, or affected by any possible 
implications springing out of the other provisions of the Constitution, or out of the 
whole of it. Sir, that position in truth and in sound logic ends the controversy. 
"When I read these guarantees of private propert}', and the emphatic declaration 
that it shall be taken but for public uses, and then only on just compensation 
being made, there is an end to the question of the right of the citizen to. have a 
fair price for his property where it is taken for public use. The argument cannot 
be answered. 

Xow, sir, what does this joint resolution propose to do? It proposes to take 
slave property without making any compensation to the owners: and here let me 
examine the question: What is just compensation for private property? Has the 
Government of the United States, or any of its authorities or oflicers, civil or mili- 
tary, the right to wrest a man's property from him without he receiving corapen- 
•sation for it at the time, or within a n^asonaijle period thereafter? I answer, no. 
If a military officer says that he takes it for the public service, and because the 
exigencies of that service require him to take it, and that is all he says or does or 
is authorized to do liy his Government in relation to making just compensation for 
property, and there are no means of making compensation by law, I ask does that 
aatisfy in any sense the requisitions of the Constitution? 

The constitutions of the different States have similar provisions in relation to 
taking private property for public use. The constitution of my own Stale has a 
provision almost in t!:i- sair.e words, acd I believe that most of the State eonstitn- 
tions have a similar provision. What have been the adjudications of the supreme 
■court of the State of Kentucky in i-elation to that provision? The extreme point 
vhich they have ruled in relation to the power of the Government in its favor is, 
taat there must be laws in force and effect authorizing the levy of money upon the 
State for the purpose of making this compensation; and these laws must be executed 
by the proper court asseseing so much money as will be sufficient to pay a fair and 
reasonable price for the property that is so taken ; and they have decided in explicit 
terms that any fetate of case or of law short of such a provision as that does not 
satisfy the requirem^nta of the Constitution. The legal cunsequence is, that the 



9 

taking of property, even for public use, under any other state of case, would be & 
wrong to the owner; and the otBcer so taking it could be sued and held liable as a 
trespasser. 

Is not that proposition obvious to every man of good sense? Shall the Govern- 
ment any more than an individual, in the exercise, if you please, of its high power 
of sovereignty, take private property without making or offering to make nr hav- 
ing made any provision whatever for its fair value to the owner? Yet such is the 
practice and the constant practice of our Government. It is in derogation of the 
Constitution and the rights of property guarantied to the citizen. Th^" question 
might vv'ell arise when the property was taken from the citizen if compensation 
therefor should not then and there be mad^. But until there are laws which au- 
tliorize the valuation of the property and tlie assessment of money to pay the owner 
for it, there is not a pretense that the guarantee of the Constitution hJa been sat- 
isfied. 

Here is another violation of this principle by the course of the Government in • 
the practices of its military officers. "What power has a United States ngent, civil' 
or military, to take private property and to place his own value u]ion it? What 
right has a recruiting officei, or the Secretary of War, or the President, to enlist a 
negro man and to assess §300 as,his value, if any be assessed, when, if his time and 
service were assured to his owner or the hirer from that owner, he would be worth 
from two to three hundred dollars a year? What right has the Government of the 
United States, or any of its agents, to seize any property, whatever, that is neces- 
sary for the uses of the Army, or for any other branch of the public service, and 
arbitrarily to assess their own value upon it? There is but one mode in which 
that can be properh' and legally done; and that is for disinterested commissioners 
or appraisers to be selected by authority of law, to ascertain the fair and reasonable 
value of the property, whatever it may be; and for the United States to have a 
course of proceedings ready provided for by law, and to put them in course of ex- 
ecution, for making to the owner of the property the fair compensLition for it at 
the lime that he is deprived of its possession. Sir, a Government that acts upon a 
different principle is oppressive, is tyrannical; it violates fliigranily the requisitions 
of the Constitution and the rights of the citizen; it does not answer the purposes 
and ends for which the people organized their Government. They never intended 
or formed their Government to wrong and oppress them; and the highest obliga- 
tion of its officials is to be just to the people. 

!But, Mr. President, a great deal is claimed in this day of insurrection and civil 
war under the pretext "military necessity." Sir, I deny that there is any suca 
power as that in our Government that will sanction the enormous abuses of power 
that have been perpetrated dui'ing this war. That question was up before the Su- 
preme Court in the case of Mitchell vs. Harmony — a case that aiose during the 
Mexican war. I will read from 13 Howard's Reports a pai;e or two of the opinion 
that will give the general facts of the case, and the principles that arose and were 
decided in it: 

"He (the defendant) jiistitied ibe seizure on several grounds: 

"1. That ilie plaintiff was ens;a<red in trading with the enemy. 

'•2. That he was compelled to remain witli the Ameriem forces, and to move with them, to 
prevpnt the property from lalling into the hands of the enemy. 

" ■}. That the property was taken for public use. 

"4. That if the deiendant was lialile tor the origiiial taking he was relea.ned from damages for 
its subspqiient loss by the act of the plaintiff, who had resumed the possession and control of it 
before the loss hnppened. 

' ' 5. That the deiendant acted in obedience to the order of his commanding ofiiocr, and tlierefore 
is not liable. 

' ' The first objection was overruled by tlie court, and we think correctly." 

The opinion then goes on to the second and third objections, which contain the 
material parts of the opinion, as they bear on the principles decided in the case : 

"The second and third objections will be considered together, as they depend on the same prin- 
ciples. Upon these two grounds of delense the circuit court instructed the jury that the defendant 
might lawfully tiike possession of the goods of the iilainliff, to prevent Iheni from falling into the 
hands of the public enemy ; but in order to justify the seizure the danger must be immediate and 
impending, and not remote or contingent.. And that ho might also take them for public use and 
impress tiiem into the public service, in case of an immediate and pressing danger or urgent ue- 
ctKSity existing at the time, but not otherwise. 

" In the argument of these two points, the circumstances under which the goods of the plaintiff 
were taken have been much discussed, and the evidence examined for the purpose of showing the 
nature and character of the danger which actually existed at the time or was jipprehendcd by the 
commander of the American forces lint this question is not l>eforo us. It is a (piestion of fact 
upon which the jury have passed, and their verdict has decided that a danger or necessity such as 
the court described did not exist when the property of the plaintilf was taken by the detendan-. 
And the oulj subject I'c^r inquiry in this court is, whether the law was correctly stated in Jie in- 



10 

struction of the court; and whether anything short of an immediate and impending danger from 
the pnblic enemy or an urgent necessity for the public service can justify the taking of ])riv»te 
property by a military cominaiuler to prevent it from fwlling into ihe hands of the t;nemy, or for 
the purpose of convertintr it to the use of the enemy. 

"The instruction is objec-teil lo'on the ground that it restricts the power of the officer within 
narrower limits than the law will justify; and that when tjie troi'ps are employed in an expe«litioc. 
into the enemy's country, where the >langer that meets them cannot always be foreseen, and where 
they are cut off from aid of their own Government, the commanding officer must necessarily be 
intrustt^d with some discretionary power as to the measures he should adopt; and if he acts hon- 
estly and to the best of his judgment, the law will protect him. But it must be remembered that 
the question here is not as to ilie discretion he may exercise in his military operations or in rela- 
tion to those who are under his command His distance from home, and the duties in which he is 
engaged, cannot enlarge his power over the property of a citizen, nor give to him in that respect 
any authority which he would not under similar circumstances possess at home. Ami where the 
owner has done notliing to f irfeit his rights, every public officer is bound to respect them, whether 
he finds the property in a foreign or hostile country or in his own. 

" There are,»withQUt doubt, occasions in which private property may lawfully be taken possession 
of or de.<troyed to prevent it from falling into the hands of the'public enemy; and also where a 
military officer, charged with a particular duty, may impress private property into the public ser- 
vice, or take it for public use. Unquestionably, iu such cases, the Government is bound to make 
full compensation to the owner; but the officer is not a trespasser. 

" But we are clearly of opinion that in ill these cases the danger must be immediate and im- 
pending, or the necessity urgent for the public service, such as will not admit of delay, and where 
the action of the civil authority would be too late in providing tiie means which the occasion calls 
for. It is impossible to define the particular circumstances of danger or necessity in which this 
power 'may bH lawfully exercised. Every case mmt depeifd <>n its own circum-tHne-'S It is 
the emergency that gives the rijjht, and the emergency must be shown {o exist before the taking 
can be justified." 

It goes on then fuillier to state that if the comraander of the expedition himself, 
General Doniphan who gave the oi'der, had been there doing the act of taking 
possession of the property, he himself would not hare been justified but would 
have been a trespasser, and that the order of a superior to an inferior to do an 
illegal act still leaves that act, though performed in obedience to positive orders, a 
trespass, and the subordinate is responsible for ii as a trespasser. But the two 
main principles decided are these: first, private property cannot be seized bj' a 
military man unless the danger that creates this necessity be so immediate and im- 
pending, the case so urgent, that it cannot wait for the action of the civil authori- 
ties; S(5eond, where the urgency and necessity is of that character that cannot 
await, still, if the propertj- is seized, it is in every instance upon the condition 
that the Goverumeut is bound to laiake reasonable and just compensation for it to 
the owner. 

Now, sir, these are the two principles which this case establishes; and they are 
as favorable to the; Government and its agents as the provisions of the Constitution 
can authorize any enlightened court to lay down. They go to the very verge that 
can be claimed by any military commander whatever, even the Commander in-Chief. 

But, sir, if that ease of urgent, ira]>ending necessity that cannot wait the action 
of the civil authorities be upon an officer, although he may justify himself against 
an action of trespass, yet in establishing such a case of n«cessity, it to no extent 
exempts the Uuited States from their liability to make compensation for the 
property. 

Now, sir, the amendments which I propose to offer, if the joint resolution shall 
assume a shape to make it in order, contemplate two or three movements upon the 
part of our Government: first, that so far as negroes free or slave are soldiers they 
shall be disVjanded and disarmed; that as many of them as are necessary in the 
service of the United States as teamsters or laborers may be so retained "by the 
order of the President, but they are to be retained as private property, and com- 
manders of the regiments to which they are attached iu the service are to give a 
certificate of their employment in the service of the United State?, and their own- 
ers are to be entitled quarterly to a reasonable compensation for their services. 

Sir, it would be the wisest policy that this Government could adopt to accept the 
first branch of my proposition. Those negroes should never have been enrolled as 
a part of the Arm}- of the United States. It was a great and a fatal mistake. The 
best thiit now can be done is to retrace that erroneous step as rapidly as we can. 
Sir, this rebellion has been strengthened to an incalculable degree by the employ- 
ment of negro soldiers. The policy, the system upon which the war has been con- 
ducted, has had r.o other effect than to unite and knit together the southern people 
firmly, indissolubl)' almost, and to call forth their utmost force and resources to the 
support of their rebellion. It has alarmed aud deeply dissatisfied the loyal popu- 
lation of the border slave States, been a grievous injustice and oppression to that 
class of population in the rebel States, and caused everj'where oppressive measures 
that have produced widespread discontent in all the loyal States. 

Sir, there was not a power necessary to have enabled the Government to subdue, 



11 

ill a reasonable lime, this rebellion, that could not have been properly conferred 
upon it by constitutional legislation, and that would not have been literally in con- 
formity to the Crittenden resohition and of the President's pledges in relation to 
the war. 

But, sir, if the error, and, in my judgment, the fatal error, ia enrolling negro 
soldiers is not tf) be retraced, we then come to that impregnable constitutional pro- 
vision that private property whether a slave or any other class of property, cannot 
be taken for the use of the Government without making the owner fair, just, and 
reasonable compensation. If the Senate should be indisposed to accept my first 
proposition, it ought at least to take the second. If it is resolved to have the mili- 
tary services of the negro, it must, in obedience to all the decisions of the Supreme 
Court, recognize the negro, where he is a slave, as propert}-, and it must, in obedi- 
ence to those decisions, "as well as to the express provision of the Constitution, make 
provision for the payment of his fair value to the owner. ' 

Mr. President, I will add one other word in connection with this branch of the 
subject. There are some gentlemen in this Chamber wlio were invited with other 
gentlemen, including myself, from the border sIbvc States, to meet the President in 
consultation some two years ago in relation to slavery in the border States. On that 
occasion the President renewed his pledges, in the most explicit and clear language, 
that it was not his purpose to interfere with slavery in the States. He then admitted, 
in the most plain and distinct terms, that there were the same constitutional and le- 
gal guarantees to the owner of that property as to the owner of any other class of 
property. As I have stated before once or twice on this floor, he put this pointed 
case. " I," said the President, "earn $1,000, and I invest that money in land; 
another individual earns §1,000 and invests it in a negro slave; he has as inde- 
feasable a right to his slave as I have to myland." 

He added furthermore, "I am not yet prepared to break with Greely and com- 
pany." A gentleman from Maryland suggested to him that the rights of the owners 
of that description of property were already being threatened to be infringed in 
that State. He then with emotion asseverated, "If I live until the 4th of March, 
18(35, I will remain President of the United States, and this property shall be pro- 
tected in Maryland." A gentleman from that State then suggested to the President 
that the effect and substance of the conference between him and the gentlemen 
present should be reduced to writing. The President warmed up somewhat, and 
with some earnestness directed this question to that gentleman, " Do you see any 
of the snake in me?" I then thought that he had none of the snake in him, but 
how I have changed my opinion since! He was then dissembling; he has prac- 
ticed the obliquity and crawling, stealth }• movement of the snake towards its object 
upon the whole of the institution of slavery, though he then made professions so 
different to the gentlemen who surrounded him. 

But, Mr. President, I have some authority here on the subject of property in 
slaves that I beg leave to lay before the Senate. Both the members from Massa- 
chusetts assume audacioush' that there is not and cannot be property in negroes 
because they are human beings. Sir, Massachusetts herself has a history upon this 
subject, and I will read a little from that history. Let us see how Massachusetts 
used to think and to act and to trade and to legislate upon the subject of laegro 
slavery and property iu slaves. I ask those gentlemen when and where and by 
whom was negro slavery established iu the American colonies — who but by Massa- 
chusetts herself? What does her history answer on these points of inquiry? A 
day of recent celebration of the eodalitj^ of "the New England Societies" at several 
points was signalized by this missile : 

"The New'England Society in tlie city of N^w York to the New EngLind Society in Montreal, 
greeting: Thanks for y<>ur generous wisfies. We shall not cease to labor for their complete fulfill- 
ment; ami by the blessing of God. and our titUl victorimts arms, we mean in our next aoniver- 
gary, in all the States, froyn Maine to California, to celebrate the national jubilee in honor of the 
eternal jirinciphs of lilerty under the law, which the Pilgrims, emerging from the cabin of the 
Mayflower, laid down as the corner stone of the nation." 

This promised glorification is not to be for the restored union of the States, the 
vindicated authority of the Constitution and laws of the United States, and the 
return of peace and good will to a torn and warring people, but for the violent and 
revolutionary overthrow of slaverj^ in all the slave States, in disregard of constitu- 
tional guarantees and the sanction and protection of laws, b3' tlie victorious armies 
of the United States. I suppose tliat this grandiloquent piece of fustian and false- 
hood is the emanation of some half crazed Massachusetts brain. Never was there 
a more impudent pharisaism uttered than that the eternal principles of liberty under 
the law were laid down as the corner-stone of the nation by the Filgriins emerging 



12 

from the cabin of the ^^aJ•flower. The persecutions of Roger Williams and his 
Anabaptist associates, and the cropf)ing of the Friends, the burning of witches, the 
most vexatious and tyrannical body of laws and regulations extending to the 
minutiae of private and domestic life, and tlie long, habitual, and continuing disi-e- 
gard b}' Massachusetis of constitutions, laws, and treaties, all proclaim it to be 
untrue. Her early establishment by law of i^egro slavery, her enactment of the 
first and a vigorous fugitive slave law and slave code, declare its bold untruth. 

The Mayflower landed her Pilgrims on Plymonth rock ii. 1620; and the Massa- 
chusetts Legislature, called " the General Court," in 1641, established this law : 

" It is ordered by this coiirt, and the aulliority thereof, that there shall never be any bond slavei-y. 
villainage, or captiviiy among us, unleait it be i<twfid captivex Uiken in just wars, an iiUlinyly teU 
theniKeh-eH or are sold to vs. and such shall have the liberties and <'hrisMan usages which the law 
of God established in Israel concerning such iiersons iluth mortally reijuire : Provided. This e.'c- 
eiiipts none from servitude who shall be adjudged thereto by authority." 

On the 5th of September, 1C72, "Articles of Confederation of the New England 
Colonies" were oidained at Plymouth. Section seven provides: 

"■ It is also agreed if any servant run away from his master into any other of these confederated 
• jurisdictions, that In such casii, upon the certijicate of one magistrate in the jurisdiction out of 
■which said serv.int fled, or upon other due proof, tlie said servant shall be delivered to his master 
or any other that pursues and brings such certijicate or proof.'''' 

Here was the first fugitive slave law of North America. 

In 1683, the General Court passed a law concerning the right of men to sell 
themselves for debt; and providing that the court of the county should regulate 
the time of servicje, so' that other creditors "should not be deprived of their fair 
share of the man's iifeli.ine." As early as 163G the General Coun had declared that . 
no "covenant servant in household with any other should hold oflice or vote." 

In 1G3G, Massachusetts passed a law in rel'ation to ''covenant servants," the first 
section of which is : 

" It is ordered that no servant shall bo set free or have any lot nntil he have served out the time 
covenanted, under penalty of such fine as the quarter's court shall inflict, unless they see cause to 
remit the same." 

This provision continued to be her law for ttpward of a century. 
In June, 170S, she passed this law, from which it appears there were mulattoes 
in the land of the Pilgrim Fathers at a very early day as well as negro slaves: 

An act relating to mulatto and negro slaves. 

"Whereas great charge and Inconveniences have arisen to divers towns and places by the releas- 
ing and setting at liberty mulatt'i anil negro slaves: For prevention whereof for the future. 

JBe it ilecUired and enacted hi/ hix E-fcollency the Governor, Council, a)id. Representatives., in 
Oeneral Court asxendiled. and )n/ the a\ithoritrjofthe same, That no mulatto or negro slave shall 
hereafter be manumitted, discharged, or .«el free, until sufficient security be given to the treisurer 
of the town or (dace where such jn-rson dwells, iu a valuable sum, not less "tlinn fifty p nirids, to 
secure and indemnify the town or nlace from all charge tor or about such mulatto or negro, to be 
manumitted and set at liberty, in case he or she by sickness, lameness, or otherwise, be rendered 
incapable to suppnrt him or herself 

■ And no mulatto or negro hereafter manumitted shall be'deemed or accounted free, for whom se- 
curity shall not l>e given us Hforeeaid, but shall be the proper cliarge of their respective masters or 
mistresses, in case they stand in need of relief and su))port, noiwith^tanding any maniimi-sion or 
instrument of freedom to them made or given ; and shall also be liable at all times to be put forth 
io service by the selectmen of the town. 

"We adopted that law in Kentucky pretty much in the same language and having 
essentially the same meaning 

In October of the same year Massachusetts passed this other law: 

An act to prevent disorders in the night. 

Wlicreas great disorders, insolences, and burglaries are ofltimes raised and committed in the 
night lime l)y Indians, neiiro and mulatto servants and slaves, to the disquiet and hurt of her Ma- 
jesty's good subjects: For the prevention thereof, 

Jie it enacted '>// his Excellenc;/ the Governor, Couneit, and Representatives, in general court 
osseinbl'd, and by the aiithoriti/ of the same. That no Indian, negro or mnlatt<i servant or slave, 
may presume to be absent from the families whereto they respectively be|.>ng, or be found abroad 
in the night time after nine o'clock, unless it be upon sc me errand for their respective masters or 
(■wners. And all juttiees of the peace, constables, tithin^rmen, watchmen, and other her Majesty's 
good subjects, being houseliolders within the same-town. ar<^ hereby respectively empowered "to 
take up anil apprehend, or cause to be apprehended any Indian, negro or mulatto servant or -lave 
that shall be found abroad alter nine o'clock at night, and shall not give a good and satisf.iclory 
account of their business, make any disturbances or otherwise misbehave themselves, and forth- 
with convey them before the ne.Kt justice of the peace, if it be not over late in the night, or to re- 
strain them in the common prison, watch-house, or constable's house until the morning, and th-n 
cause them to ai)pear b.for-' a justice of the peace, who shall order them to the house of correc- 
tion to receive the discipline <>f the house, and then be dismis^ied; unless they be charged will, 
any other offence than absence from the families whereto Ihey respectively belong, without leavt 



13 

Troin their respective masters or owners ; and in such towns where there is no house of correction 
to be openly whipped by the constable, not exceeding ten stripes. 

In IVlS she passeil a law to punish any master of a vessel who should receive on 
board a hired servant without pernjission (.f liis master, and making him also liable 
in damages to the "master or owner." Within twenty ye^rs after the landing of ' 
the Mayflower the Pilgrim Fathers passed u law of which sec-tiou three reads: 

''Sec. .3. It is also ordered that when any servant- slinll run away from their ma,4ers" * * » 
"it shall be lawful for. the next mag;islrate, or the constable and two of the chief inhabitants, 
where no magistrate is, to press men and boats or pinnaces at the public charge to pursue such 
persons by sea and land, and bring them back by force of arms." 

Such are the laws and usages of Massachusetts, which established, regulated, and 
gave security to slave property, and that seem to have been the models upon which 
the more southern slaveholding colonies fnshioned their laws in relation to the same 
subject. But the Massachusetts system was the more atrocious in several feitures: 
it comprcliended lohiie men, Indiana, negroes, and mulattoes. The title of the 
masters was by importation from fo'cign countries, captivity in war, and purchase. 
It established a servitude by the sale of himself of the white man, and forbade his 
enfranchisement by his master until his term had expired. It •enacted an effective 
fugitive slave law for the white man, Indian, mulatto, and negro, servant and slave; 
and when they eloped from their '-owners and masters," authorized their pursuit 
at t.he-publio charge, and upon a simple official certificate of their being slaves or 
servants, and directed them to be returned to their slavery or servitude. It required 
nr)t the testimon;/ of two witnesses, and no sworn evidence whatever upon the point. 
It allowed no trial or examination before court or commissioner, no writ of habeas 
<orpus, and no bail nor writ of replevin for the pursued fugitive; but its stern judg- 
ment was that he should go back into his former servitude or slavery. It punished 
the servant or slave, whether white, Indian, negro, or mulatto, male or female, with 
.-^tripes, to be inflicted at the house of correction or publicly, for disorderly conduct 
or being from home after nine o'clock at night, unless on some special errand. 

But, Mr. President, I now proceed to some of the minutie of Massachusetts 
slavery, as established by her early history. I quote from the Historical Magazine : 

"Hugh Peter writes to John Winthrop from Salem (in 1637)" — 

only seventeen years after the landing of the Maj-flower — 

" Mr. Endecot and my selfe salnte you in the Lord Jesus, &c. • Wee have heard of a divi- 
denee of women and children in the bay, and would be glad of a share, viz: a young woman 
or girle and a boy if you thinke good I wrote to you for some boyes lor Bermudas, which I 
think is considerable " (M II. S. Coll., IV, vi, 95 

In this application of Hugh Peter we have a glimpse of the beginning of the colonial slave trade. 

He wanted "some boyes for the Bermudas," which he thought was "considerable." 

It would seem to indicate that this disposition of captive Indian boys was in accordance with, 
custom and previous praciec of the authorities. At any rate, it is certain that in the Pequod war 
I hey took many prisoners fiome of those who had been " disposed of to particular persons in 
the country," (Winthrop, I, 2-32,) ran away, and being brought in again were "branded on the 
should.-r." (lb) 

In May, 1637, Winthrop says: 

■•We had iv>w slain and taken, in all, about seven hundred. We sent fifteen of the boys and 
two women to Bermuda by Mr Peirce; but he, missing it, carried thtm to Providence Isle."" 
(Winthrop, I, 234.) 

The learned editor of Winthrop's Journal, referring to t-iie fact that this proceeding in that 
day was probably justified by reference to the practice or institution of the Jews, very quaintly 
observes, '• Yet that cruel people never sent prisoners so far." (lb., note.) 

A subsequent entry in "Winthrop's Journal gives ua another glimpse of the subject, Decem- 
ber 26, 1637: 

"Mr. Peirce, in the Salem ship, the Desire, returned from the West Indies after seven 
months. lie had be«n at Providence, and brought some cotton, and tobacco, and negroes, &c., 
from thence, and salt from Tertiigos." (Il>.,254.) 

Winthrop adds to this account that "dry fish and strong liquors are the only commodities 

for those parts. He met there two men-of-war, sent forth by the lords, Jcc, of Providence with 

letters of mart, who had taken djvera prizes from the Spaniard an. I many negroes." Long 

. afterwKrds Dr. Celknap said of th" slave trade that the rum distilled in Massachusetts was 

"the mainspring of thi.s Iraffick." (M. II S Coll., I, iv, 197 ) 

Josselyn snys, " That they sent the male children of the Pequots to the Bermudas." (25S M . 
II. S. Coll, IV, iii, 360.) 

In the Pequot war, some of the Narrajansetts joined the English in its prosecution, and re- 
ceived a pan of the prisoners as slaves, for their services Miantnnnomoh received eighty 
Nirngrrt was to have twenty. (Drake, 122, 146 Mather's lielation, quoted by Drake, 39. See 
abo Hartford Treaty, September 21, 16-38, in Drake, 125.) 

Captain Sto'^rhtmi, who assisted in the work of cxierminating the P(<iuot3, after his arrival 
in the enemy's country, wrote to tlie Governor of Massachusetts [Winthrop] as follows: "By 
this pinnace, you shall receive forty-eight or fifty women and children "' * * * , * 
■• Concerning which, tliere is one I lorinerly mentioned that is the fairest and largest that I 
saw amongst them, to whom I have given a coate to clothe her. It is my desire to have her 
for a servant, if it may stand with your good liking, else not." 



14 

I reelcon that would have been the desire of the two Senators from Massachusetts 
if they had been there, especially of the gentleman who stands at the head of the 
Military Committee. 

"There is a little squaw that Steward Culacul desireth, to whom be hath given a coate. Lieuf 
Davenport al?o dfstreth one, to wit. a small one, that hath three strokes upon her stomach, thus : 
— Ill -1-. He desireth her.' if it will stand with your liking, hosomon , the Indian, desireth a 
young little squaw, which I know not." (MS. Letter in Mass. Archives, quoted by Drake, IVl.) 

Probably if he had known her Sosomon would not have had the privilege of 
getting her. 

An early traveler in New England has preserved for us the record of one of the earliest, if n«f 
indeed, the very first attempt at breeding of slaves in America. Tiie following passage from Jos- 
selyn's Account of Two Voyages to New England, published at London in 16G4, will explain itself. 

"The sec-ond of October, [1689,] .ibout 9 of the clock in the morning, Mr. Maverick's Negro 
wom:in came to my chamber window, and in her own Countrey language and tune sang very loud 
and shrill ; goingout to her. she used a great deal of respect towards me, and willingly would 
have expressed her grief in English; but I apprehended it by her countenance and deportment, 
whereupon I repaired to my host, to learn of him the cause, and resolved to intreat him in her be- 
half, for that I understood before, that she had been a Queen in her own Countrey, and observed a 
very humble and dutiful £arb used towards her by another Negro who was her maid." 

You see the term "negro" was used in that da}-. This fashionable shilly-shally 
language of "colored persons" and "descendant of Africa" was rather too circum- 
locutory, [laughter,] and they come out with the plain and direct tferm of "negro." 

" Mr. Maverick was det^irous to have a breed of Negroes, an^l therefore seeing she would not 
yield by persuasions to company with a Negro young man he had in his house; he commanded 
him will'd she nill'd t-he to go to bed to her, which was uo sooner done but she kickt him out again, 
this she took in high disdain beyond her slavery, and this was the cause of her grief." (Josselyn. 
2S.) 

Wliat a nice specimen of a Puritan "consecrated to human liberty" have we here! 

Emanuel Downing, a lawyer of the Inner Temple, London, who married Lucy "Winthrop, sister 
of the older Winlhrop, came over to New England in 16-33 The editors of the Winthrop Paper.'' 
say of him, " There were few more active or eflScient friends of the Massachusetts Colony during 
its earliest and most critical period." His sou was the famous Sir George Downing, English Em- 
bassador at the Hague. 

In a letter to his brother-in-law, " probably written during the summer of 164.5," is a most lumin- 
ous illusiration of the views of that day and generation on the subject of human slavery. lie says : 

"A warr with the Narragansett is verie considerable to this plantation, for I doubt wliither ytbe 
not synne in vs, hauing power in our hands, to suffer them to mayntcyne the worship of the devil" — 

Massachusetts like. They -wanted slaves then, and in order to make slaves of the 
Isarragansetts, fanatical-like they took up the idea that they would make war be- 
cause the Narragansetts worshipped the devil. I think Massachusetts has been 
guilty of a good deal of that sort of worship since. But to continue this extract: 

"'which their paw wawes often doe ; 2!ie, If upon a .Just warre the Lord should deliver them intc^ 
our hands, wee might easily haue men, woemen and children enough to exchange for Moores. 
which wilbe more gayneful pilladge f<ir ws than wee conceive, for I <lo not see how wee can thrive 
uiitill wee gett into a stock of slaues sufficient to doe all our buisiiicss, for our children's children 
will hardly see this great Continent filled with peojile, soe that our servants will still desire freedom 
to plant for themselvei, and not stay but for verie great wages. And I suppose you know verie 
well how wee shall maynteyne 20 Moores cheaper than one EnglisUe servant.'" 

A matter of domestic eeonqpiy entered largely into the subject. They could 
make valuable exchanges of Indian captives for Moors, a sort of negroes, and this 
writer says that one ^vhite servant was more expensive to his master than twenty 
Moors. 

"The ship.'! that shall bring Moores may come home laden with salt which may beare most of the 
chardge, if not allof yt. But I marvavle Conecticott should any wayes hasard a warre without 
your helpe. (M. H. S. Coll., IV, vi, 05.) E. T. E." 

You see there the Massaeliusetts thrift. They wanted to j>ut the whole cost of 
the voyage upon p.art of the cargo, so that the slaves they intended to purchase 
should not bear any portioi:f of it. 

Rev. Dr. Belknap, of Boston, Massachusetts, in a letter to Judge Tucker, of "Wil- 
liamsburg, Virginia, in 1795, admits the existence of negro slavery in Massachu 
setts, and that the slave trade was prosecuted by merchants in Massachusetts. He 
says that "the slaves purchased in Africa were chiefly sold in the West Indies, or 
in the Soutl'.ern Colonies; but when these markets were glutted, and the price low, 
some of them were brought hither." lie says, the slaves were most numerous in 
Massachusetts about 1745, and amounted to about 1 to 40 of the whites; and pro- 
bably numbered about 4,000 or 5,000.* 

* Mass. His. Collections, Vclutac IV, pp. 191—211. 



15 

lo. 1705, by another act, slaves were, for certain offences, to be sold out of the 
province. Any negro or raulatto, who should strike any of the English or other 
Christian nation, was to be severely whipped. Marriages were to be allowed be- 
tween slaves, but I have found no law prohibiting a husband and wife from being sold 
apart. An import duty on negroes of £4 per head was imposed, but the duty was 
to be paid back, if the negro was exported, and ''bona fide sold in any other plan 
tation." "And the like advantages of the drawback shall be allowed to the pur- 
chaser of any negro sold within the Province." 

la 1707, we find an act punishing free negroes or mulattoes, for harboring any 
neero or mulatto servant. And in 1718, an act imposed a penalty on every master 
of a vessel who should carry away any person under age, or bought or hired ser- 
vant, without the master's or parent's consent. All these laws are to be found in the 
aid folio volumes; of Provincial Statutes. 

"The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts prohibited the enlistment of slaves in 
the army ; thus showing that slavery legally existed there in May, 1775. The rea- 
son given is a curious one — that they were contending for the liberties of the Colo- 
nies, and the admission into the army of any others but freemen, would be incon- 
sistent with the principles to be supported, and reflect dishonor on the Colony."* 

'•In the year 1657, (during the reign of Endicott,) Lawrence Southwick, and 
Cassandra, his wife, very aged members of the Church in Salem, Massachusetts, for 
offering entertainment to two Quakers, were fined and imprisoned. They absented 
themselves from meeting, and were fined and whipped. A son and daughter of thi= 
aged, and according to Puritan standard, pious couple, were also fined for non- 
attendance at meeting ; and not paying this fine, the General Court, by a special 
order, empowered the Treasurer to sell them as slaves to any of the English nation 
at Virginia or Barbadoes."\ 

Mr. Samuel G-. Drake, in his History of Boston, says that " many Irish people 
had been sent to New England," and sold as "slaves or servants." Also, that 
"many of the Scotch people had been sent,- before this, in the same way. Some of 
them had been taken prisoners, at the sanguinary battle of Dunbar. Tliere arrived 
in one ship, the 'John and Sara,' John Greene, master, early in the Summer of 
1052, about 272 persons. Captain Greene had orders to deliver them to Thomas 
Kemble, of Charlestown, who was to sell them, and, with the proceeds, to ta^e 
fneight for the West Indies."^ 

It is thus shown that negro slavery was a Massachusetts institution. In the Con- 
vention which formed the Constitution, the committee of detail reported the form 
of one with this clause : 

'■ No tax or duty shall be laid by the Legislature on articles exported from any State ; nor on the 
migration or importation oi such persons as the several States shall think proper to admit; nor 
-shall such migration or importation be prohibited." 

If that provision had been retained, or if one authorizing Congress to prohibit 
the slave trade had not been adopted, any State could have continued it indefinitely. ' 
The people of Massachusetts were at that time largely and profitably engaged in 
the slave trade to the southern States. Luther Martin, of Maryland, proposed to 
amend the section as reported, so as to allow a prohibition or tax on the importa- 
tion of slaves to be imposed by Congress. The members from Massachusetts divided 
on this propositson of Luther Martin. That section, with others, was referred to a 
committee of eleven, but Massachusetts failed to vote on the motion to refer, and 
that committee reported in lieu of it a provision authorizing Congress to prohibit 
the slave trade after the beginning of the year 1800. Mr. Pinckney, of South Car- 
olina, moved to strike out ISOO and insert I'SOS. That motion prevailed, Massachu- 
setts voting in favor of it; and thus by her position the slave trade would have been 
allowed to continue in perpetuity ; but other States controlling her on that point, she 
was enabled to procure a continuance of it for twenty years longer. She, and all 
the States, voted for the provision authorizing the rendition of fugitive slaves. To 
that, which she now opposes -with phrensied passion, there was no objection in the 
Convention. Her course is explained by the fact that the slave trade was her trade. 
She furnished the ships and sailors that visited the slave marts on the African 
coast and purchased negro captives from their savage conquerors for rum and 
trinkets, and curried them to the southern States and sold them for enriching 
prices in gold. She voted to continue her trade in slaves. 

* Tlon. E. E. Potter's Speech in the Senate of Ehode Island, March 14, 1863. 
t Lambert's History of Colony at New Haven, p. 1S7. 
X History and Antiquities oi Boston, 1855, p. 342. 



16 

If Massachusetts had been situated in the low latitudes, &nd her soil had been 
rich, inexhaustible alluvion, prod ucinaj cotton, sugar, and rice, who doubts that she 
would have been heavily peopled with African slaves, that she would now have 
held and would continue to hold on to them with the firm grip which has ever 
characterized the spirit of her all-covetousness, that she would to this day have 
been intensely pro-slavery; and that her two Senators, if under that state of things 
they could have got to the Senate, would be her most faithful representatives; and 
that she and they would now be resisting vehemently and obstinately such assaults 
upon the institution as they are making upon it? Massachusetts has always been 
active, energetic, alert, inventive, intellectual, avaricious. Intermeddling, fanatical, 
domineering ; but her love of acquisition has ever been and still is her master pas- 
sion. She continued illicitly the slave trade after the law of Congress prohibiting 
it went into operation, and when it was finally broken up by the combined action 
of Congress, courts, and cruisers, and could no longer minister to her rapacity by 
the smuggling of slaves into the southern States her more subordinate characteris- 
tics, fanaticism and meddlesomeness, began to spring up, and after a while became 
dominant. Siie conceived the project of robbing the people of the southern State? 
of the slaves that she liad carried and sold to them for money. In the name of a 
spurious philanthropy she commenced to agitate in everj- form most industriously 
and intensely to distroy that property, not in Cuba and Brazil, but among her 
own countrymen and customers, and set up her impudent and absurd " higher law '' 
conceits to break down the constitutional and legal guarantees with which it had 
been so long environed, and which she contributed so much to build up. She inau- 
gurated not onlj' in her own borders, but in every locality to which her people 
could gain access, a general system of talking, lecturing, declaiming, and preaching 
against the "great crime of slavery," publishing newspapers, tracts, novels, essays, 
boobs, and pictures, all fraught with the basest falsehoods aud slanders against it 
and slaveowners, and rendering and intending to render it abhorrent to the north- 
ern people. 

Massachusetts thus estranged, divided, and exasperated the people of the free 
and slave States. She, with malice aforethought, schooled them to hate each other 
with a diabolical purpose of sundering the Union and subverting the Constitution 
be'cause of the protection which it gave to the owners of slaves. She complained 
that the freedom of speech and the press and her rights were violated because the 
slave States would not open their bosoms to her nefarious agitation of that property, 
and of the right upon which it was founded. Let us look at her deliberate resolve.-. 

Mr. WILKINSOX. If the Senator from Kentucky will permit me, I will move 
an adjournment. 

Mr. DAVIS. "Well, this is a pretty good stopping place. 

Mr. WILKINSON. I wish to move an adjournment : but before doing so, I ast 
the Senate to take up Senate bill No. 41, to promote enlistments in the Army of the 
L^nited States, and for other purposes, with a view to make it the special order for 
' Thursday next, at one o'clock. 

The VICE PRESIDENT. That motion will be entertained by the unanimous con- 
sent of the Senate. If there be no objection, that will be regarded as the sense of 
the Senate, and that bill will be assigned for Thursday next, at one o'clock, and be 
made the special order for that hour. The question now is on an adjournment. 

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate adjourned. 

Mr. DAVIS on the next day resumed his remarks as follows : 

Mr. Prebident : A philosopher and a poet once published a couplet : 

" For forms of government let fools contest ; 
That which is best administered is best." 

There is more truth and philosophj- than poetry in that couplet. In point of 
excellence and perfection of form there is no Government that ever had exist- 
ence which is equal to ours; but in its administration at tins time I believe that it 
is one of the most oppressive and grinding that now exists. I think it is practically 
a military despotism. There is no constitutional provision, there is no law of Con- 
gress, there is no constitution or law of a State but what crumbles in its presence 
and at its touch. 

The Constitution of the United States establishes the judicial department of the 
Government. It refers all questions of a judicial character, whether arising under 
the Constitution or the law, to that department for its decision. There is no right 
of the citizen, whether it be personal, appertaining to his life and his libert\', or his 
property, but what is legitimately the subject of the inquiry and judgment of the 



17 

judicial department of the Government. But in this day of usurpation of power 
and of practical revolution tliese provisions of the Constitution and the law are 
wholly disregarded; and the President of the United States, under a claim of mil- 
itary necessilv, repudiates and sweeps away the whole Constitution and all the 
laws of Congress, and all the civil tribunals appointed by the Constitution and the 
law fo)' their enforcement, and in their stead lie substitutes, by his own arbitrary 
will, military courts, and makes the indefinite and indetiiiablfc law of their own will 
the rule vi their proceedings, action, and judgments, instead of the ordinary and 
civil law by which to adjudge and punish the citizen. 

There is no man whose rights are safe from the assaults of the Government of 
the United States at this time. There is no man whose property is not subject t-o 
be taken from him by the arbiti'ary action of some subordinate military officer, 
without compensation, without any proper inquiry for the purpose of deciding 
whether there is a state of case in which such power may be rightfully exercised. 
There is no provision made by law to remunerate the owner of propertj' for that 
which is thus arbitrarily taken from him. The writ of habeas corpus is suspended ; 
and on that point I will remark that the only proper effect of it is to prevent the 
citizen fiom having that summary and ex parte examination of his case that is inci- 
dent to the return and to the hearing of the writ. The suspension of the writ does 
not properly arrest or suspend or obstruct the legal trial by the proper civil court, 
which every citizen is entitled to have according to the guarantee of the ConstiCu- 
tion ; and kny courts which lend themselves to the purpose of suspending the due 
administration of the law b^' refusing such trials, make themselves criminally sub- 
servient to the same usurpation of power. 

There is no citizen of the United States, even in the loyal States, but what is 
subject, at all times, to be arrested at any hour of the day or the night, without 
any process issued out according to the requisitions of "the Constitution, without 
any charge of offense or crime, without its being communicated to him what is the 
cause of his arrest; and he is subject to be dragged from his home to distant 
prisons, and there to be indefinitely confined in a dungeon without any protection 
or redress. 

Sir, under our form of constitutional government, and of its limited and restricted 
jurisdiction, in addition to the abuses which i have enumerated, all the State laws 
of every State, loyal as well as disloyal, are subject to be superseded by the arbi- 
trary will of the Presideiit and bis military subordinates; courts are deposed; 
judges are driven from their halls; ministerial officers with process in their hands 
are interdicted from makinjg execution of them ; and armed men invade the courts 
for the purpose of suppressing the due execution of law and defeating the protec- 
tion which should be vouchsafed to every citizen. 

Sir, not onl}- all this abuse; but when the wave of rebellion is driven back from 
some of the States, and our conquering armies have taken or are about to take un- 
disputed possession of those reconquered States, the President of the United States 
assumes the unconstitutional -and dictatorial power to prohibit those St-ates from 
returning to the Union under thtir constitutions and laws. He imposes upon them 
conditions which he has no more authority or power to impose than you or I have, 
and he requires that these conditions shall be complied with by their people before 
they shall be admitted to their constitutional rights as States of this Confederacy, 
and the people of those States to the protection, the rights, arid the liberties guar- 
antied to them by the Federal Constitution and laws and their own States' consti- 
tutions and laws. 

Sir, under tlie impression produced upon ni}' mind by this hasty and imperfect 
review, I come to the conclusion, and I here declare in my place my solemn convic- 
tion, that tlie d<^spotism of Russia or of Austria is not so oppressive, so galling, and 
80 grinding as the military despotism that is now in full operation in the United 
States. Tills military despotism has been but partially executed. Reelect the in- 
cumbent who now fills the presidential chair, or elect a man of the same or more 
extreme principles and policy, and you then confirm by the vote of the f>eople of 
the United States the present usurpations of those in power, their assumptions of 
that enormous and tyrannical power that never was intended to be, and never was 
in fact, delegated to them by the framers of the Constitution, and which if it had 
been proposed would have produced a prompt rejection by that body unanimously, 
I have no doubt, if it had not broken up the body itself without accomplishing its 
work. 

Sir, what said, as reported in the papers, our Secretary of State to the British 
minister. Lord Lyons? "My lord, I can touch a bell on my right hand and order 
the arrest of a citizen of Ohio ; X can touch the bell again and order the imprison- 



ment of a citizen of New York; and no power on earth except that of the Presi- 
dent can release him. Can the Queen of England do as mneh?" No, sir; nor the 
Emperor Napoleon, nor the Emperor Alexander, nor any other potentate of the 
earth, can enact the same despotism that is expressed in this brief but most true 
and most terrible picture of arbitrary power. 

Mr. ANTHONY. . Allow me to ask the Senator from Kentucky when such re- 
marks wei'e made by the Secretary of State? 

Mr. DAVIS. ■ I have just stated that all I know about it is its publication in the 
newspapers 

Mr. ANTHONY. Does the Senator deem that sufficient authority on which to 
present si c'l a statement to the Senate? 

Mr. DAVIS. I should be gratified to find that it was not true; but if it not true 
I should suppose the Secretary of State would contradict it. 

Mr. ANTHONY. I leave the Senator himself to decide whether it is not more 
.proper to find out that a statement is true before lie quotes it in the Senate. 

Mr. DAVIS. Here is the report of a most extraordinary decHration by the Secre- 
tary of State to the minister of the first Power on earth accredited to our Govern- 
ment. This declaration is published in the papers, and, so far as I know and have 
understood, it never has been contradicted. 

Mr. ANTHONY. I will ask if the Senator from Kentucky 

Mr. DAVIS. Let me proceed, if you please. Make a memorandum of your 
questions, and present them to me when I get through. I would rather answer 
them altogether. 

Mr. ANTHONY. The only question I wish to ask is whether the Senator him- 
self is in the habit of contradicting the remarks he finds in the newspapers about 
himself, or are we to believe everything that we see about him in the papers which 
he does not contradict? • 

Mr, DAVIS. If I were Secretary of State, and such a remark as that were made 
about my communicatio-ns to Loi-d Lyons, the British minister, and it was not true, 
I certainly would contradict it. 

But, Mr. President, I proceed now in the line of my remarks. It is not my pur- 
pose to occupy any more time than is necessary, and I do not wish to trouble the 
Senate again at any length. I know the Senate are weary with hearing me, and, 
to acknowledge the God's truth, I am beginning to be reall}- wearied of hearing 
myself [Laughter.] 

Mr. President, when I yielded the floor yesterday I had advanced to that stage 
in the historj' and the progress of action by the great State of Massachusetts when 
she had reversed all her former principles and positions on the subject of slavery. 
And now let me read of some public action and resolves of that State in support 
of this new and most extraordinary, unconstitutional, illegal, and unjust policy 
upon which she has entered with so much vim. A convention was held in Boston 
in 1855 that unanimously adopted resolutions which I will read: 

" ReHoh'ed, That a Constitution which provides for a. slave representiition and a slave oligarchy 
in Congress, which legalizes slave-hunting and slave-catching on every inch of American soil, and 
which pleitges the military and naval power of the country to keep four million chattel slaves in 
their chains, is to be trodden xmder foot and pronounced accursed, however unexceptionable and 
valuable its other provisions may be." 

"When Massachusetts was fulminating such a denunciation as that against the 
Constitution, why did she not recollect and why was she not brought to shame and to 
dumbness b}' her previous course in relation to the same subject? Why was she 
not struck mute by her course in the Convention which formed the Constitution of 
thfe United States? Why did she denounce a provision of the Constitution that 
was passed by the unanimous support of the members of the Convention, including 
her own, that provision which secures to the owners of fugitive slaves their rendi- 
tion from other States into which they may liave escaped? 

The next resolution of this series is: 

'■'■Resolved, That the one great issue before the. country is the dissolution of the Union, in 
comparison with which all other issues with the slave ))ower. are as dust in the balance; there- 
fore we will give ourselves to th>-. work of annulling this 'covenant with death' a« essential to 
our own innocency and the speedy and everlasting'overthrow of the slave system." 

Sir, gentlemen get up now and flippantly and audaciously hurl the charge of 
treason at other members of the Senate, and at true and \6y&\ citizens over the 
land — men who have uttered this treasonable sentiment, men who have cherished 
it as the purpose and object of their lives and of their policy. In January, 1857, 
Massachusetts held a State convention at Worcester, that passed the -resolutions 
that I will now read: 



19 

^^ Resolved, That this movement docs not seek merely iIisuni.on, but thp more perfect uniou 
of the free rotates by the expulsion of the sliive Slates from the confederation in wliich they 
liave ever been au element of diseord, danger, and disgrace.'' 

There is a slight mistake. The true subject of that deimnciation should hav* 
been, not the slave States, but the State of Massachusetts herself "Give the devil 
his due." Spejik of South Carolina and the other States that are now in this wicked 
rebellion, and when, and where, and how did they ever interfere with the constitu- 
tions and laws of the northern or free States, with their domestic institutions, with 
their rights of property, with any of those interests or affairs that were left to them 
by the Constitution and over which tiiey had the exclusive jurisdiction? The 
southern States never intermeddled iu the domestic concerns of Massachusetts or 
any of the other northern States; and if Matsaehusetts had herself acted with the 
the same forbearance, with the same scrupulous regard to the provisions and the 
spirit of the Constitution of the United States and to the great principles upon 
which our system, State and Federal, is based, we should not now have this de- 
plorable war upon us. / 

The next resolution was: 

" Resolved, That it is not probable that the ultimate severance of the Union will be an act 
of deliberation or discussion, but that a long period of deliberation and discussion must precede 
it ; and this we meet to begin.'' • 

They mean to begin for the diabolical purpose of agitating with a view to the dis- 
solution of the Union! Was there ever so treasonable an avowal so boldly made 
by any body of men ? 

" Resolved, That li%nceforward, instead of regarding it tis an objection to any system of policy, 
that it will lead to the separation of the stales, we will proclaim that to be the highest of all 
recommendations and the greatest pr'>of of statesmanship ; and wo will support, politically or 
otherwise, such men and measures as apprar to tend most to this result. « 

'■'■ Reiolced, That by the repeated confession of northern and soutnern statesmen, 'the existence 
of the Union is the chief guaranty of slavery:' and that the despots of the whole world have 
everything to fear, and the slaves of the whole world everything to hope, from its destruction 
and the rise of a free northern republic 

'■'■Resolved, That the sooner the separation takes place the more peaceful it will be; but that 
peace or war'is a secoudary consideration in view of our present perils. Slavery must be con- 
quered, ' peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.' " 

That principle they then took up and they are now acting fully up to its execu- 
tion, not by the power of Massachusetts alone, but by the aggregate power of 
the vast armies of the United States. 

" Resolved, Th.at the experience of more than sixty years has proved our national Government 
to be a mere creature and tool of the slave power." 

How? Had not the free States preponderated in the two Houses of Congress 
and iu the electoral college which made the President and Vice President ever 
since the beginning of the GovernmPnt? Had they not always the power and the 
strength to make whom they willed President and Vice Pi-esident, and to pass such 
laws as they chose? Then the course of presidential elections and of congressional 
legislation was the judgment and the act of the free States, at least so many of them 
and such of their representatives and electors as when united with those from the 
slave States, gave them power. But my recollection both of legislation and of 
presidential elections is that never until sectional parties grew up in the United 
States were there any divisions of that kind in relation to anj- subject of policy and 
legislation, or in the election of President and Vice President; but it was always a 
mixed vote of free and slave States, without a division and separation by the line 
of slavery. 

" Resolved, That the experience of more than sixty years has proved our national Government 
to be a mere creature and tool of the slave power, subservient only to the purpose of despotism; 
a foriuidable obstacle to the advancement and prosperity both of the free and slave States; a libel 
upon our denioeralic theories of government ; a disgrace to the civilization of the age, and a 
bitter curse to the cause of freedom in our own country and throughout the world." 

Did not every point and subject of this bitter malediction exist at the time that 
the Convention framed our present Constitution? Did they not all exist at the 
era of the Declaration of Independence, and when it was recognized by the treaty 
of 1783? Were not all these matters that are thus bitterly denounced, originated, 
built up, and sustained by the action of Massachusetts? These resolutions proceed: 

"Resolved, That, in view of this long and painful experience, we have no longer any hope of 
its reformation, but are fully convinced that the best interests of every section of the country re- 
quire its immediate dissolution. ^ 

"Resolved, That this convention recommends, as the first step toward the accomplishment of this 
object, the organization in each of the States of a political party outside of the present Conatitu- 



20 

lion and Union — a party whose cansliilalcs shall be publicly pledged, in the event of their election, 
to iguore the Federal Government, to refuse an oath to its Constitution, and to make their respect- 
ive Slates free and independent communities." 

Sir, was tliere ever a fouler or more audacious position of disloyalty to our Gov- 
ernment, a bolder and more daring disregard of the obligation v/hich every citizen 
owed to the Government, than is manifesud iu this series of resolutions? Now, I 
■will read some ot the mottoes inscribed upon the banners of this dissolution party 
in the State of Massachusetts and other States who aie members of the loyalleagues 
and making such lofty claims of unconditional support of the Union: 

" Thorough oraranization and independent political action on the part of the non-slaveholdinj; 
whites of lUtt South. Ineligibility of slaveboMi-rs. Never anotlier vote to the tralfickers iu human 
flesh. 

'■ No patron.nge to slaveholdinsr merchants; no guests to slaveholding hotels; no fees to slave- 
hohiin-r lawyers ; no employment to s'lavetioldlnir physicians; no audience to slaveholding parsons ; 
no recognition of pro-slavery men except as ruffians, outlaws, iind criminals. 

■'Immediate deatli to slavery, or, if not iiumediate, unqualilied proscrijition of its advocates 
during the period of its existence.'', 

"Was there ever a fiercer, a more savage and unrelenting war denounced against 
any institution or any set of men who were fiiithfully sustaining their Government 
and laws, their only sin being the adoption of ."slavery, an institution founded by 
Massachusetts? 

Tlie descendants of those men now turn upon an institution which they fostered 
and carried to and enlarged in the Southern Slates by the slave traffic, in their 
own ships and with theii' own capital. Is it not one of the most extraordinary 
and e.\trerae inconsistencies ever exhibited to mankind ? Could any race of people 
except the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers be guilty of it? 

Mr. Pre.sident, Massachusetts ih 1843 passed her first law in 'direct hostility to 
the fugitive slave law of 1*793. This last law was enacted in obedience to an 
express provision of the Constitution, that persons held to slavery in one State 
escaping into another should be rendered back to their owners. That provision 
of the Constitution was as valid and as obligatory on the people of Massachusetts 
and their Senators as any provision in that instrument. The law was pas.sed when 
Washington was President, and by a Congress many of whose members had been 
engaged in the revolutionary struggle and had been members of the Federal Conven- 
tion. It was passed in the Senate without a division, and in the House of Represen- 
tatives by a vote of 58 to 7. It came under the revision of the courts of the United 
States, and of the States, and it was sustained by every judicial tribunal, Federal and 
State. It was approved by the Father of his Couutrj', the man at the head of the 
human race, who rises high above every other speciiuen of humanity notwith- 
standing he was a slaveholder, and who iu all hli attributes and his whole life was 
more godlike than any man that has appeared upon earth since the days of the 
inspired apostles. 

Shortly after Congress had passed the second fugitive slave law, in 1S50, there 
was formed in Boston an association that combined talent, wealth, office, position, 
numbers and permanency, for the special and declared jmrpose, and by all means 
'even unto organized armed resistance, to defeat any and all atten)pts to execute the 
fugitive slave laws in that State, and now her paramount and darling jiurpose 
in the vehement support she gives to the war, i.s not for restoration, but revolu- 
tionary and violent overthrow of slavery and the organism of the slave States, and 
virtually of the Union and Constitution of the United States, by making their 
armies the ir.strument of this her work of destruction. 

Will the Senator from Massachusetts at the head of the Military Committee state 
on this floor that he never had knowledge of that association in the city of Boston 
and of the special and isolated object of its organization? Did he never meet 
•with it in council? Was he never advised with by its leading and active members? 
Did he never give it his countenance and support? The other Senator from Mnssa- 
chussetts is too open I presume to deny his position in relation to that organiza- 
tion, but his more covert colleague is dumb and silent in relation to these points 
of interregatory. But I will proceed with what I was saying in regard to Massa- 
chusetts Her most sinster, selfish, and wicked ends are in that way to get poss- 
ession of the' rich cotton and sugar lands and the freed negroes of the .Southern 
States, and work thetn in perpetuity for the emolument of the sons of the Pilgrim 
Fathers; to reduce the Southern States to a sort of colonial dej)endeuce, and to 
make them industrially, commerciall}', and politically subservient to herself and 
the nortnern States. 

That is the whole scheme, combining fanaticism, avarice, meddlesomeness, and 
all the other obnoxious characteristics thSt ajipertain to that peculiar people, the 
desceudents of the Pilgrim Fathers. 



21 

I have before me a life of the fugitive slnve Burns -written by Stevcne, a Massa- 
cliusetts man. After speaking of the public excitement prodOced in Boston "by" that 
arrest, he adds : 

•'No immediate step wa? taken, however, exci'pt by an association styled a committee of vigil- 
ance. This association took its orittin from the passage of the fugitive slave act. Jtft nole oh,ject 
?£•<(.? to defeat hi <i/' canes the execution of that hnied Statute. Thoroughly organized under a 
written code of laws, with the necessary otHeers and working committees, arranged on the princi- 
plo of a subdivision of labor, with wealtli and professional talent at its command, actuate'i by the 
most determined purpose and operating in secret, it was well fitted to strike powerful blows for 
the accomplishment of its object." 

The object was the defeat and the overthrow of an act of Congress hy a bold 
and trea.sonable band of conspirators, which, if successful, would have been pro 
taitto a dissolution of the Union; and yet men who support and give'their presence 
and countenance and aid to such organization for such a purpose, have the face 
to come here and take an oath to support the Constitution of , the United States, 
which this whoTe movement was intended to strike. down in part, and to brand as 
disloyal and semi traitorous men more true and loyal to tlie Government and to 
every principle of good faith than they. The historian further says of this associa- 
tion : 

"'The roll of its members displayed the most diversified assemblas;e of characters, but this 
diversity only fecuied the greater efficiency. The wliite and the colored race free-born sons of 
Massachusetts and fui;itive'slaves from the South here co-operated together. Among tht-m were 
men of fine culture and of high social position. Some of the rich men of Boston wer.e enrolled in 
this committee.'' 

The historian then proceeds to give details of the many modes in which this 
organization opeFated. lie adds : 

"By this committee of vigilance the case of Burns was now taken in hand-. Early in the after- 
noon of the day following his arrest a full meeting for the i>urpose was secretly convened " 

For what purpose? To take Burns from the custody of the law, and in that way 
to rejieal, practically to put down, the law of Congress. I read further: 

"On the main point there was but one voice; all agreed that, be the commissioner's decision 
what it might, Hums should never be taken back to Virginia if it were in their power to prevent." 

Burns was arrested or the 24th of May, 18.54, and by the judgment of the commis- 
sioner was rendered up to his master the •2d of June. In that interval there was 
addressed a circular letter to the " yeomanry of Massachusetts" adjuring them to 
to rendezvous at Boston with a view to the case of Burns. Sonie three hundred 
men were organized in Worcester and marched to Boston, and large numbers 
from most of tlie adjacent towns concentrated there. Every sort of appeal was 
made by the leading friends of Burns to inflame and madden the people in his favor 
and to rescue him at any cost. One night it was estimated there were from eight 
to ten thousand infuriated men, and the most of them secretly armed, surrounding 
the court-house in which he was confined to coerce his release. To execute the 
fugitive tlave law in his case about two thousand armed and drilled men, artillery, 
infantry, marines, and volunteers, had to be assembled to sustain the civil magistrates. 

But for that effective and large military force to sustain the civil officers, what 
would have become of the lav/ of Congress and of the appointed magistrates for its 
execution ? The whirlwind of passion and crime that then agitated Boston and rocked 
that city from its centre to its exterior would have swept these powerless officers 
from their posts and Burns would have been rescued and set free, and there would 
have been a practical revolution of tlie Government consummated, not total, but 
to the extent of the overthrow of an important policy and law of Congress, in 
■which nearly half the States were deeply interested. If bold and daring treason 
had been succesr-ful, the Government would virtually have been brought to an end; 
its whole moral power would have been subverted; and it would have been con- 
temned, not only in relation to that law, but to all others that the treasonable 
and wicked spirit of Massachusetts might have prompted her to resist. 

On the second night after Burns' arrest, and before the forces to rescue him, or 
those to prevent it, had assembled in large numbers, a portion of his armed friends, 
led on by Rev. Thomas W. Higginson, made an assault on the court house in which 
he was confined and guarded by United States soldiery, to wrest him from the 
custody of tlie law. The door was ponderous and st'oug, but, by a kind of cat- 
apult, the assailants broke out one of its panels, and Higginson and a few of his as- 
sociate traitors made an entrj". They were repelled, but Batchelder, one of the 
assistant marshals, was mortally wounded, it was said by Iligifinson; and a soldier 
■was aliO wounded. Higginson was both a murderer and traitor, and, if possible 



22 

should have been twice hung in expiation of each oflfense. But the present Execu- 
tive has appointed him colonel of a negro regiment. 

Sir -what kind of a moral example is that? The President of the United States 
is sworn to uphold, defend, and protect the Constitution and to execute the laws, 
and yet he aj>|Mpints a murderer and a traitor to be a colonel of one of the regiments 
cow in the miiitai-_y service of the United States. 

The Senator from Massachusetts — I mean the military Senator — did not answer 
but evaded the question whether "he was against the rescue of Burns," and replied, 
"I had rothing to do with it;" and repeated, " I bad nothing to do with it, and had 
no knowledge of it until after it transpired. I was not in my own State at the 
time." And to the question, "Did you ever condemn that insurrection? Did you 
ever do anything to put it down — its spirit?" he would not answer directly, Ijut 
evasively, thus: " There was no occasion; it was put down quickly." 

At the time of the attempted rescue of Burns, diJ not that Senator know that 
there existed a powerful organization in Boston formed for no other purpose than 
to defeat the execution of the fugitive slave law as often as there should be an 
arrest under it.^ Was he ever counseled in relation to that association, and its ob- 
ject ai^d modus operandi ? Had he learned that this rescue would be attempted, 
and did he run away from liis friends and comrades as he did from the battle of 
Bull Run, to avoid responsibility and danger? Natick, his place of residence, is, I 
believe, fibout seventeen miles from Boston. How came lie to be away from his 
home and out of the State for more than nine days from the lime Burns was arrest- 
ed until he was rendered up and taken "back to old Virginny?" Where was he all 
that time? What was he doing? Is it not most strange that in more than nine 
days he should not have heaid of this most exciting aft'air, the telegraph, too, 
being in operation? But the member from Massachusetts said of this demonstration 
to rescue Burns: 

"The Senator [Mr. Davis] prates about a little mob coniposcd of a few men in the city of Boston, 
and brands their action as insurrection and rebellion. Insurrection! Kebellion! Sir, there was 
no insurreciion; there was uo rebellion. It was at nio«t but a mob, and a very small mob allhat." 

The Senator has become so greatly augmented that he has not only Cyclopean 
notions of liimsflf but also of rebellions and insurrections. I have presented to 
the Senate the facts of the attempt to rescue Burns, as published iu the newspapers 
at the time, and as thej' have since been recorded by a Boston histoiian. It was 
one outbreak of a numerous and powerful organization of conspirators and traitors, 
who had combined and confederated together to defy the authorily of the United 
States, and b}' force of arms and all other means to defeat wholly and in all cases 
as they might arise the execution of their law. That organization had then existed 
for years, and I suppose still exists. It was much more formidable in its plan, ar- 
rangement, numbers, wealth, intelligence, duration, and iu the force it displa3'ed 
when the rescue was attempted than was the combination in Pennsylvania to defeat 
the execution of the law of Congress to levy an excise on whisky. That was at the 
time and now is in history denominated an insurrection, and so will and so ought 
the attempt to rescue Burns to be characterized, and if it had been successful 
would have betn in fact a revolution of the Government by force of arms. 

But, Mr. President, in the face of the facts which I have arrayed to the contrary, 
the member from Massachusetts has the effrontery to declare to the country in this 
Chamber tiiat — 

"No man in her Legislature desired or expected to resist the authority of the Federal Govern- 
ment. What Massachusetts intended to accomplish by her legislation was the protection of her 
otcn citi-eii-f; and if any question arose between her and the Federal GovernmeLt, growing out 
of the attemjited execution of the fugitive slave act, she was ever ready to submit those qu'eeiions 
to thejudicialtribuuals of the country and to abide the verdict." 

Tliis position is both disingenuous and untrue. It attempts to make a discrimi- 
nation between the men in her Legislature and her people, and to claim a special 
immunity fur the former alone. All questions arising under the fugitive slave law, 
however the Legislature of Massachusetts might endeavor to draw those coming up 
in that State to her own courts, are by an express provision of the Constitution re- 
ferred exclusivelj' to the decision of the Federal courts. They had all been cecided, 
again and again, bj* the Supreme Court and the circuit courts of the United States 
against her positions and assumptions. She would not abide by those decisions; 
a!id it was in a treasonable spirit and effort to reverse them, and practically to nul- 
lify the fugitive slave laws of Congress, that she passed what is called " lier per- 
sonal libert)' bill," by which, against the Constitution of the United States, she 
sought to bring and retry all those questions in her own abolition courts and by her 
own abolition juries. 



23 

I 

Wafe Burns aud every other fugitive slave who might get to Boston citizens of 
Massachusetts? That is tlie position of tlie Senator and his State. Governor An- 
drew ostentatiously published that if Lincoln would make a proclamation of 
freedom to the slaves the roads and alleys would swarm with Massachusetts volun- 
teers rushing to the war. Yet in a very short time afterwards the agents of Mas- 
sachusetts, with the Senator's cooperation, were scouring the rebel and loyal States, 
the slave and the free States, offering large bounties for negro recruits, free, slave^ 
and frcednieu, to fill up her quota and keep her own white people from the war. 
Massachusetts is a great State, but her people have some queer notions, and always 
think their will ought to control. The member from Massachusetts says: 

"Sir, the impiit.ntions, the reproache.s, the slanders, that so gliljly flow from the lips of the Sen- 
ator from Keutucky will not reach the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. No word of his can 
soil her name or dim her fame. There is not strength enough to his arm to fling a shaft that 
shall strike that proud old CommonweaUli." 

The Senator attempts to pull on the buskins of Mr. Webster, and affects the terse- 
ness, dignity, and grandeur of his defense of Massachusetts against the assaults of 
Senator Hayne, of South Carolina. I advise his successor to quit his attempts to 
copy Mr. Webster; he only apes his model, and it is miserably bad apeing too; or 
some time when he is attempting to swell himself to the stature of Mr. Webster, the 
scene of the frog and the ox may be re-enacted. But I concede one of the positions 
tiong of the member from Massacliusetts: '"Xo word of mine can soil her name or 
dim her fame." If she has not herself, or such of her degenerate sons as jhe have 
not soiled her name or dimmed her fame, they are safe from me. But let us exam- 
ine that question a little further. 

Her arrogant, dictatorial, and " rule-or-ruin " spirit broke forth in opposition to 
the acquisition of Louisiana during Mr. Jefferson's Administration, and she de- 
nounced the treat}- by which that vast country was acquired, because of the want 
of constitutional power on the part of our Government to acquire foreign territory, 
and also of the impolicy of the measure. She made her similar arrogant eondem- 
nation of the treaty in which Spain ceded Florida to the United States. Through- 
cut the war of 1812 with Great Britain, which was declared to protect Massachu- 
setts seamen against impressment by that haughty Power, and to vindicate the 
freedom of the seas and the right? of international commerce, in which her people 
were so largely interested, that spirit became so heightened and deepened, so ma- 
lignant aud treasonable, as to break forth in the most, vituperative condemnation of 
the war and our own Government by the people of Massachusetts; in frequent and 
most critliinal attempts to thwart and defeat the United States in their great strug- 
gle to bring the war to a speedy and successful close ; in a resort by them to mani- 
fold devices to weaken, dispirit, and produce the defeat of our land and naval forces, 
and to strengthen and give aid and comfort and victory to our enemj^; in continual 
and most extravagant laudation of the policy, power, and moral position of Eng- 
land in that war, and the basest disparagement of their own country and Govern- 
ment by imputations of corruption and imbecility, of prejudice against England and 
subserviency to France, and a purpose, not to ledress national wrongs, but of ra- 
pacity, ambition, and conquest; in efforts to detach the thirteen original States and 
leave the Federal Government and the other States at war with one of the greatest 
Powers of the earth; and another most absurd and wicked project, that Xew Eng- 
land should make a separate peace with Great Britain, and at the end of the war 
its States should resume their position in the United States. These are grave 
charges and most disparaging to Massachusetts, and it is to be deplored that they 
are true in their fullest force. 

She elected a Governor and Legislature hostile to the Government of the United 
States and opposed to the war, and who exerted themselves continuously and 
defiantly to uphold the cause of England, and to coerce the President of the 
United States to make an ignominious treaty, without the concession or acknowl- 
edgment by Great Britain of a single right for which the war was undertaken. ' 

Her people first got up the Esse.x .Junto and then the Hartford Convention, both 
of which were treasonable associations, composed of the enemies of their own 
Government and the friends and sympathizers of England; a*d their objects and 
action were to divide our people, distract the public councils, weaken the military 
operations of the United States, and to make the war so disastrous as to force them 
to a shameful ]ieace. 

In the summer of 1812, some two months after the declaration of war. President 
Madison made a requisition on Governor Strong of that State for a portion of her 
militia to er.ter the service of the United States. He refused to comply; and in 
connection with his council submitted to the judges of the supreme court of that 



24 

State several questions which it will not be necessary to read, as they, are embodied 
in the answers of the judges. Those answers I will read: 

To hU Excellency the Governor and the Honorable Council of the CommonicealtJi of Jfassu- 
chu-ietts: 

The iirulersiKni'il justices of tlie supreme judicial court, liave considered the several questions 
proposed by your Excellency and Honors for their o]jiiiion. 

t By thp constitution of this State, the authority of conimandin<; the militia of the Coitimonweallh 
is vested exelnsively in the Governor, who has all Ih^ i)i>wers incident to the office of commander- 
in-chief, and is to exercise them^ersonally, or by subordinate officers under his command, agree- 
ably to the rules and regulations of the constitution and the Imws of the land 

While the Gov. rni>r of the (Commonwealth remained in the exercise of these powers the Federal 
Constitution was ratified, by which was vested in the ' ongre^s a power to provide for callinz forth 
the militia to ej'ecufe (he laws of the Cnion, suppress in.-w/ection, aw! repiel invaiiions, and to 
provide for governins such part of th^m as may be employed, in th>- service of the I'nited States, 
reserving to the States respectively the aiipoiiilinent of the officers. The K-deral Constitution 
further provides that the President sliali be Commanderin-i hief of the Army of the I'nited Slates, 
and of the militia of the several States when called into the actual service oi" the United Spates. 

On the constructi'on of the Federal and State constitutions must depend the,an8wers to the several 
questions i)ropo8ed. .\s the militia of the several States may be employed in the service of the 
United Stales for the three specific purposes of executing the laws of the Union, of suppressing 
insurrections, and reiielling invasions, the opinion of the judges is requested whether the com- 
mande's-in-ehief of the militia of the several States have a ritiht to determine whether any Qf the 
exigencies aforesaid exist, so as to require thorn to place the militia, or any part of it, in the service 
of the United St;;les, at the request of the President, to be commanded by him pursuant to acts of 
' Congress. 

It \» the opinion of the uiidersigned that this right is vested in the commanders-in-chief of the 
militia of the several States. 

The Federal Constitution provides that when either of these exigencies exist the militia may be 
employed, pursuant to some act of Congress, in the service of the United States; but no power 
is given, either to the President or to the C< ngress, to determine that either of the said exig<ncies 
does in fact exist. .\s this power is not delegated to the United Stales by the Federal Constitu- 
tion nor |>r<iliibited by it to the States, it is reserved to the States respectively, and, from the 
nature of the power, it must be exercised by those with whom the Stales have respectively in- 
trusted the chief command of the militia. 

It Is the iluly of these commanders to execute this important trust agreeably to the Isws of their 
several States respectively, without reference to the laws or officers of the United States in ail 
eases except those specially provided for in the Federal Constitution. They must, therefore, 
determine when either of the special cases exist, obliging them to relinquish the execution of this 
trust, and to render Ihemselvi a and the militia subject tti the command of the President. 

A different construction, giving to Congress the riaht to determine when those special cases exist, 
authorizing them lo call forth the whole of the militia, and liking them from the commanders-in- 
chief of the several Slates and subjecting tliem to the command ot the President, would jilace all 
the militia, in cffeet. at the will of Congress, and produce a military consolidation of the States. 
without any eonstitutional remedy, against the intentions of the people when ratifungthe Federal 
Constitution. Indeed, since the passing of the act of Congress of February 2S. 1795. vesting in the 
President the power of calling forth the militia when the exigencies mentioned in the Constitution 
shall exist, if the President has the power of determining when those exigencies exist, the militia 
of the several States is in fact at his command and subject to his control. 

No inconveniences can reasonably be presumed to result from the construction which vests in 
the commanders in-chief of the militia in the several States 'he right of delurmining when the ex- 
igencies exist obliging them to place the militia in the service of the United Slates. Theseexigen- 
cies are of sueh a nature that the existence of them can be easily ascertained by or made known 
to the commanders-in-chief of the militia; and, when ascertained, the public interest will induce 
a prompt obedience to the acts of Congress. 

Another question proposed to the consideration of the justices is, whether, when eithf>r of the 
oxiirencies exist authorizing the employing of the mililia in the service of the United Statis, the 
militia thus employed can be lawfully commanded by any officer but of the mililia except by the 
President of the United States. 

The Federal fonsiitulion declares that ihe President shall be the Commander-in-l'hief of the 
Array of the United States. He may undoubtedly exercise this <-nmmand by officers of the Army 
of the Uni ed .^lates, by him commissioned according lo law. The President is also declared to be 
the Comniamler-in-Chief of the militia of the several States when called into liie actual service of 
the United States. The officers of the militia are to be appointed by the States ; and the I'residenJ 
may exercise his command of the militia by the officers of Uie militia duly appointed. But we 
know of no constitutional provision authorizing anj otiicer of the Army of the United States t' 
command the militia, or authorizing any officer of the militia to command the Army of the United 
States. The ("ongress may provide laws for the government of the militia when in actual service; 
but to extend this power lo the placing of them under ihe command of an officer not of the militia, 
except l+ie rre-idcnt, would render nugatory the provision thai the militia are to have officers ap- 
pointed hy the States. 

The union nf the militia in the actual service of the United States wilji the troops of the United 
Stales, so as to form one Army, seems to be a case not provided for or contemplated in the Consti- 
tution ; &c. 

Now, sir, this o]>inioa decides two principles. It states correctly that there are 
three exigencies pi'ovided for by the Constitution in which the militia of the States 
may be called into the service of the United States: first, to execute the laws; 
second, to repel invasions; and third, to put down insurrection; but that opinion 
assumes as a constitutional principle that the power to decide wlien any or ail tliese 
exigencies iiappens belongs not to Congress or to the President of tlie United States, 
but to tlie Governors of the States; and even wlien the Governors tlieinselves have 
decided sucli an exigency to exist and have ordered their militia into the service of 



25 

the United State?, the milititi can be commanjed by no United States military offi- 
cer, except by the President himself. 

Sir, there is another specimen of Massachusetts loyalty: the Governor of Massa- 
chusetts having refused to order the militia of that State into the service of the 
United States, some of the patriotic people of the district of jNIaine volunteered, 
and were placed by the President under the command of General William King. 
In the year 1813 "the Legislature of that State passed a resolution inquiring of 
General King whether he had accepted any agency or commission from the United 
States, or received from them any arms or munitions b}- order of the President of 
the United States. General King replied : 

"Tlio volunteers who tendered their services to the Tresident for the defense of their country 
were accepted and organized, and have been lurnished wih arms on appli-'alion to the General 
Government soon alter the commencement of the jiresent war, when the siTvieesof the df.taoked 
militiii were williheld from the General Government, I aided the War Dcpartmeut in organizing 
snch a volunteer corps as was considered necessary for the defense of this district. After two regi- 
ments were organized, the .-trvices of such a number of companies were offered as would have 
made three other regiments, if necessary. As a citizen of the United States I have duties to per- 
form as well as a citizen of the State, in this just and holy war." 

A response worthy the friend of that often-tried and true patriot, John Holmes. 
Massachusett.-; afterwards asked and received pay, not for the services hut for the 
time of the n)ilitia that she withheld from the United States in their second great 
struggle for independence. 

This traitorous Governor Strong and his coadjutors in Massachusetts procured the 
•weak and corrupt Governor of Vermont, Chittenden, to take their position, that it 
was the cxclanve right of the Govertiors of the States to decide whether and when 
there existed an exigency that required the State militia to be put into the service 
of the United States, and to issue an infamous ))roclamation commanding t.lie volun- 
teer militia of Vermont to march back from Plattsburg, whither they had rushed 
to defend that place against the assault of one of the most formidable British armies 
that was assembled diiring the war. The traitors of Massachusetts weie loud in 
their promises to stand by their victim, and to sustain him in their common crime; 
but their guilty souls shrank from the necessary action. The brave and patriotic 
citizen soldiers of Vermont flung back their contempt upon the treasonable missive 
of their Governor, who was representing, not his State, bttt British feelings and in- 
terests, and remained to cover themselves with glory in one of the most brilliant 
achievements of the war. All honor to the memory of those gallant and true men! 
They were fit representatives of the heroes of Bennington. 

In May, 1813, Governor Strong sent a message to the Legislature of Ma--?aehusett3 
in which he reviewed all the grounds for the declaration of war by oOr Govern- 
ment agaiiist England; and argued each one in favor of our enemy; and concluded 
by charging tiie Government of the United States with having prostituted itself to 
subserve the purposes and ambition of Bonaparte. A committee of both Houses 
responded, echoing the sentiments of the Governor, and denounced the war as im- 
proper, unjust, and impolitic on the part of the United States, and asserted that — 

" "While the oppressed nations of Europe are makin? a magnanimous and generous effort against 
the common entmy of free States, we alone, the diHCtindnnU of the Pilgrims, sworn foe to civil 
.ind religions slavery, co-operate witli the opi)ressor to bind nations in his chains and divert the 
forces of one of his enemies from the mighty conflict. Were not the territories of the United 
States sulBciently extensive before the annexation of Zouiaiana, the projected reduction of 
Canada, and the seizure of West Florida? Already have we witnessed the admission of a State 
beyond the territorial limits of the United States, peopled by inhabitants whose habits, lauguage, 
religion, and laws are repugnant to the genius of our Government, in violation of the riL'hts and 
interests of some of the parties to our national politics. The hardy people of the North stood 
in no need of the aid of the South to protect them in their liberties." 

Such was the loyalty of Massachusetts to the United States in that dark and try- 
ing hour. 

Josiah Quincy offered in the Senate of Massachusetts this preamble and resolution: 

"Whereas a proposition has been made to this Senate for the adoption of sundry resolutions ex- 
pressive of their sense of the gallantry and good conduct exhibited by Captain James Lawrence, 
commander of die United States ship-of-war Hornet, and the officers and crew of that ship, in the 
destruciion of his Majesty's ship-of war I'eacock ; and whereas it has been found that former re- 
solutiom of th>« kind passed on similar o^cnxions relative to other offlcer>< engaged in a like ser- 
vice have given 'ireat di.fcontent to many of the good people of this (.'ommonwealth. it being con- 
sidered by them as an encouragement and ixcitem«-nt to the continuance of the present unjust, 
unnncexs'ar)/. ard iniquitous tear, and on ibat account the Senate of Massachusetts have deemed 
it the\r duty ti> refrain t'rom acting or\ \ho said propositions; and whereas, also, this dclermina- 
tion of the Senate may, without explanation, be construed into an inteniional slight of Captain 
Lawrence, and denial of his particular merUs, the Senate therefore deem it their duty to declare 
that the> have i high sense of the naval skill and military and civil virtues ot Captain J»mes Law- 
rence and that they have been withheld on said proposition soteli/ from considerations relative to 
the njiure .lud p htciples of the present icur. And to the end that all misrepresentation.-: oil this 
subject ma) lie obviated: 



26 

"■Resoloed, (as tlic sense of the Senate,) That in a ■war like the present, wagpd tcHhmii jii)'tifia- 
lie eaiiKe, and prosecuted in a manner tliat indicates that conquest and ambition are its real mo- 
iives, it is not ijccoming a moral and religious people to express any approbation of military or 
naval exploits which are not iraniedialely connected with the defence of our sea-coast and soil." 

This resolution was adopted by the Senate of Massachusetts 15th June, 1813. If 
the present Senators from that State had been there, thej' would have voted for it; 
and if any Senator had introduced one in the sauie terms in relation to any of our 
heroes who have fallen in this war, they would have voted the expulsion of such 
Senator. 

The British authorities claitHed that many prisoners taken by their cruizers on 
board American ships, as well native-born as naturalized citizens, were the subjects 
oi their king; and they were thrown into loathsome prisons for safekeeping, to be 
tried and hung, or shot, as traitors to George IIJ. In retaliation, and to insure the 
safety of our unfortunate captive countrymen, a United States marshal lodged s -me 
Englibh prisoners in the jail of Worcester, Massachusetts, she and most of the States 
having, soon after the Constitution went into operation, passed a law granting the 
use of her jails to tlie United States Government. A mob of Massachusetts traitors 
and British sympathizers attacked thef Worcester jail in force, broke it open, and 
set free the British hostages. The Worcester Gazette applauded this act of 1 reason- 
able violence, and denounced the United States marshal as "a lynx-eyed, full-blooded 
bloodhound of Mr. Madison." The Boston Advertiser exulted over the success of 
\)a.\^ infatnoux enterprise, and denominated the liberated English piisoners as "gal- 
lant othcers whom Mr. Madison desired to answer for the lives of self-acknowledged 
traitors, victims of a barbarous and cruel policy." 

Soon afterwards, the Legislature of Massactiusetts, in consummation of the shame 
and crime of this affair, passed a law prohibiting the use of her jails to the United 
States even for the confinement of enemy prisoners to be held for the safety of our 
captive cduntrymen about to be executed by British authorities on fabricated 
charges of treason, &c. And that law authorized and required the keepers of all 
Massachusetts jails within thirty days from its passage to discharge any British 
prisoners that were confined' in them. 

At the gloomiest periods of the war, and when our country was most sorely 
pressed by her powerful foe, the Massachusetts tradei's and shippers took out licenses 
from the British consuls to carry supplies to her armies in Spain and Portugal, 
where they were held from augmenting the armies operating againt xis in their 
great struggle with Bonaparte ; and her people also smuggled on a large scale to 
furnish the English armies and fleets acting against us on this continent and its 
coasts< One of those licensed ships was captured bv an American cruiser while on 
her illicit voyage to Spain; and her owners had the assurance, to be sure many 
years afterwards, to offer a petition to Congress to be paid by the United States for 
their ship and cargo. 

The ground upon which the British party in Massachusetts urged the original 
thirteen States to abandon their Government and the other States, and also upon 
which it proposed and pressed the project that New England should make a sepa- 
rate treaty of peace with Great Britain was, that they were opposed to the war, 
and it was fatal to their interests. But what language can express adequate con- 
tempt for their purpose to skulk back into the Union when the war should have ter-. 
minuted ? They themselves furnished the oniy parallel, and that was in hanging out 
blue-liglits to instruct and lead the public enemy to their country's disaster. That 
scheme, the separate treaty, was strenuously advocated by the Boston Advertiser. 

An embargo law was passed as one of the war measures of the United States; 
but it was denounced by the traitors of Massachusetts as void and of do effect; 
and by connivance between them and the British consuls, was so extensively evaded 
aud defeated as to produce but small results. 

That party and its presses habitually disparaged and sneered at the victories won 
by our armies over their English enemies. 

After the battle of the Thames, the Salem Gazette announced: 

" At length the handful of British troops, which for more than a year have b&ffled the nnmerons 
urmn'H of lUe United States in the invasion of Canada, deprived of the g^niuf of the immortal 
Break, have been obliged to yirld to superior power and numbers." 

Tile Bi'Ston Advertiser published of that battle: 

" We »hatt surrender all our conquests at a peace. It ia indeed a hopefUl exploit for Harrison, 
with tlve ihousiiud troops, who have been assembling and pruparing ever tinre Jcly, 1812, to fight 
aud omiiuir four hundrud and flfly worn-out, exbauMtod Briusb regulars, whom the lodlans bad 
previoiic.ly deserted." 

Another journal of Ihe same class pronounced Harrison's viotnry to be "the tri- 
nmph '>*" a crow.i of Kentucky savages over a haodfol of brave iE«n — ro more tliaa 
a ixATth And their capture witliout fighting." 



27 

* 

Here, sir, is a most flacitious violation of the truth in relation to the force of the 
British in that battle. They -were five times as much as these papers state them 
to have been. 

The gallant Lawrence fell, in the unequal fight of the Chesapeake with the 
Shannon, on his bloody quarter deck, and his last words, "Don't give up the ship," 
became the ocean slogan of America. 

Another of our naval captains, Crowninshield, under a flag of truce, sailed for 
Halifax to bring to Salem the remains of Lawrenoe, and while lie was on this 
sacred mission, and all the true men of the nation were mourning the untimely 
^eath of the hero, and Story had been appointed to speak his funeral oration, one 
Boston journal announced that this solemn errand had been undertaken "by the 
privateering captain, Cruwniniihield ; and the Boston Advertiser asked with scoffing 
malevolence, '■ What honor can be paid where a Crowninshield is chief mourner, 
and a Story ehic-f priest? JGrOvernor Strong and his council, and most of the British 
party, had no honors or respect to pay to the martyrs in the cause of their coun- 
try's rights and independence, and therefore they stayed away from the funeral of 
Lawrence. 

Two j-ears and six months of war brought peace to our country, and notwith- 
standing IvIassHchusetts had struck in her cause with feeble arm and traitor's heart, 
yet the nation's prowess on land and ocean won for her tacitly h\it forever the great 
international riglits for which she had unsheathed the sword. 

Under the stimulants of fishing bounties and high protective tariffs, Massachu- 
setts industry and enterprise soon commenced greatly to prosper. She I'egarded 
with sullen but not. very vociferous disapprobation the acquisition of Florida. She 
probably would have been more demonstrative if the negotiator had not been her 
own Adams. When Texas was about to be annexed she became xevy eruptive, and 
not only reprobated the acquisition of foreign territory by joint resolution of Con- 
gress, but reiterated her ancient and uniform position, that it could not be legiti- 
mately done b}' the treatj'-maklng power of our Government. Her Legislature 
passed these resolutions: 

"Resolved, That there h.is hitherto been no precedent of the admission of foreign territory into 
the Union by legislation, and as the powers of legislation granted in the Constlluticm of the United 
States to Congress do not embrace the case of the adnii.'^sion of a foreign State or foreign territory 
by legislation into the Union, such an act of admission would have no binding force whatever upon 
the people of Massachusetts " 

'•'■ Renolved, That the power never having been granted by the people of Massachusetts to admit 
into the Union Mates and Territories not within the same when the Constitution was adopted, re- 
raaina with the people, and can only be exercised in such manner as the people ^reo/Yar shall, 
designate and appoint." 

It being the deliberate and oft-repeated judgment of Massachusetts that the 
United States Government had no power to acquire Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, 
and that their acquisition was detrimental to some of the States, and particularly 
to Massachusetts, and she having been to so recent a period vociferous and even 
frantic in the expression of her desire and purpose that the free States should cut 
loose from slavery and the slave States, one would have thought that siie would 
have rushed to the acceptance of secession by the rebel States. Except a few crazy 
fanatics her people had always conceded fully that the Constitution and the Union 
protected slavery in the slave States, Mr. Webster, and all her eminent jurists and 
statesmen, except John Q. Adams, admitted the truth of that proposition, without 
any qualification or restriction whatever, and it was because there was no other es- 
cape from the protection which the Union and the Constitution gave to slavery that 
they were both to be repudiated by the abolitionists. 

But the abolition party within a few years had got possession of the government 
of Massachusetts ; and an extreme anti-slavery party, at the presidential election of 
1856, had manifested a most rapid and extraoidinary growth. Here w<i;5 a new 
prospect breaking upon her radicals. They were not only meddling and fanatical, 
they not only loved monej', but also power. She had always dominated and hec- 
tored over Xew England, and now opportunity was coming when, by alertness, 
daring, and decision, she could throw herself at the head of the great n.-w move- 
ment, and assume in the nation and its councils the position and controlling influ- 
ence which she iiad maintained in New England fr*to the beginning. She would 
become the leading State of the United States; and above all, she could minister to 
hollow philanthropy, fierce fanaticism, and insatiable avarice, by procuring th« 
slaves and lands of the rebels to be confi.scated, and appropriating to henelf the 
lion's share. She has entered upon this bold, ambitious, and wicked enterprise, 
driven on by the combined motive-power of all her leading characteristics, each 
one being highly stimulated by it. 



28 

A strong ingredient witli the Massachusetts rain also is this sentiment: " I have 
bo slave ; there is none v/ho call me master; and in that respect no one sliall be 
above me, and I'll bring all to mj' level." Never were there truer representatives 
of that sentiment than her two Senators. Never were there more unwoithy and 
unsafe lights for a great people than they and those whom thej' represent. 

In the excess of their hostility to slavery and slaveowners, I am at a loss' to dt- 
eide which dominates, the madman or the fiend. They show all the infei'nal malice 
of the one and the uncontrollable fury of the other. The English language has 
hardly any term of reproach and obloquy that they have not each again and agaiijk 
hurled at slavery and slaveowners. "The pollution of slavery," "the great sin of 
mankind," " the sharne and disgrace of the age," " the foulest stain on Cliristendom," 
" the degrading effects of slavery," " the demoralizing influences of slavery," "the 
brutalizing influences of slaver}'," " the deformities and degradation of character 
produced by slavery," "slave-aristocracy," "slave olfgarehy," "slave monger.-, 
"slave-hunters," "slave-catchers," "slave-breeders," " slave-stealers," and "slav( 
pirates," are some of the epithets most prodigally used by those Senators in debate 
in this Chamber. 

Sir, since the beginning of the present generation a new disease has sprung up 
in the United States. It is sometimes called "nigger on the brain," and I iiavc 
r.ever known two subjects that had it in a greater degree of violence than tlie two 
Senators from Massachusetts."^ The negro has made these two Senators. The wor- 
ship of the negro and their demagog; ng in relation to him have given them public- 
position and office, and brougiit them to the Senate of the United States. Th^y 
have made the negro a hobby. Both have jumped astride of him, and it is impos- 
sible to determine which one is before and which one is behind. I believe they 
alternate their positions in that respect. But, sir, they fulfill the Scripture in one 
poiu''. We are commanded to remember our creator ia the days of our youth. 
The negro has created those two Senators; and from their youth to the present 
time tliey have been worshiping him with an eistern devotion, and they will con- 
tinue this idolatry to the end of their lives. If they were to cease it Othello's oc 
cupation would be gone. 

Let me read one or two passages from the speeches of the Senator from Massa- 
chusetts [Mr. Sum.ver] in relation to the negro and a dissolution of the Union. It 
a speech delivered at Faneuil Hall, November 2, 1655, the Senator used these words : 

"Not that I love the Union less but freedotr. more do I now in pleading tbia creatcase insisi 
. IhHt freedom at all hazards shall be preserved. God forbid that for the sake of the Uuion we 
Bhould eaciifice the very thing for which the Union was made." 

What is his position? That the Union was made for neero freedom? Well, sir, 
it was a long day coming. The Union was first made in 1774, when the old Arlicler 
of Confederation were formed. Independence was declared in 1776, and the jues- 
ent Constitution was framed in 1787, all for the white man, and the negro was never 
known or dreamed of in any of those great transactions; and yet the honoiable 
Senator says that the Union was made for the freedom of the negro ! 

On the ioth'and '20th of May, 1856, in a .speech delivered in the Senate, that Sen- 
ator held this revolutionar}' language: 

" Alrrady the muster has begun. The strife i? no longer local, but national. Even now while I 
sp<-ak, pi.rienls lianst on all the arches of the hor'.zon, threatening to darken the broad land, to/ii'c^. 
nlreiidy ijawna toUh tJie mutteringH «t civil, war. The fury of the priipagamlisis of slavery and 
the calm di-lerminalion of thi-ir oppoBt-nts are now diffused from the disiant Terrilmy over wide- 
hprtud commuuities, and the whole country in all its extent — marshaling hostile divisions, anc 
foreBliadowing a strife, which, unless happily av«rrted by the triumph of freedom, will become vxi" 
—f rati icidui^ parncidal war — with an accumulated wickedness beyond the wickeduesa of anj 
war in human annals." 

The gentleman's worda were prophecy. Thej' are in terrible course of execution . 
and he I, as given all the ageuc}' and energy to this war and revolution for the dia 
Eofution of the Union to put down slavery that he could command. 

I will read one oiher passage from a epeecli by that Senator. In a debate in the 
S!cuate, June 2G, 1851, Mr. Butler, of South Caiolina, a.sk<.d that Senator this question : 

I would like to nsk the Senator, if Congress ropt'ulod the fucitivealavo law, would MasMchuftette 
*Xf."u!u th" Constitutional reciHiren.ontf, and send hack to the ;outh the absconding sl^ivet^? 

•' Mr. Si MN^B. iJo you ask if I would send back elavea? 

" .Mr. lU'TLKR. Why, yes. 

" Mr Si MKK.K. Is ihy servant a dog that he should do this thing? 

",\Ir. KuiLEK. Thiiu you would not obey the C'onslitutiiin 6ir, standing bore liefore this triba- 
nal. wlur.- you swore to support it, ym rise and :«-ll me that yo" rfgard it the otH- e of a dog tC' 
«ap|)ort it. ToQ tX&i\>\ In my prest-iice, a coequal K'enator, and tell me it is a dog'8 office to execute 
\\\v »;ouBtltuiiou of the Uniit-d Slates 

" Mr. BvMiiSK. I recogLize no such obligatioc.'' 



29 

What obligation? No obligation to support the Constitulion of the United 
States as it rtlates lo the rendilion.of fugitive slaves. What exempted that Sena- 
tor from that obligation * Had he not laki'n an oath to support the Constitulion as 
a totality? What right had he to make any mental reservation? What right had 
he to except the fugitive slave law, or a provision of the Conftitution which every 
man who swears to support it swears to sustain, to render back fugitive slaves? Sir, 
if a violation of the oath, taken in the broad teims in which tlie Senator has al- 
ways taken it when he qualified as a member of this body, had been by law made 
peijury, and the Senator had violated that oath, as he has violated it so often, and 
h>. had been fft-raigued on the charge of perjury before any enlightened and inde- 
pendent court, what would have been the judgment ? 

Now, sir, I will proceed a little with the otiier Senator from Massachusetts, [Mr. 
WiLSON.J They are par nubile fr air um. 1 do not know, according to their ideae, 
which is the grandest and greatest. According to my own I do not know whi':h is 
least, which is most false to the Constitution and to the loyalty that is justly due to 
their Governn)ent and to the Cojistitution and Union of these States. They come 
in here and make an exhibit of this almost daily that is abhorrent to every man 
who has any moral principle. 

But, sir, the other Senator from Massachusetts, the chairman of the Committee 
on Military Affairs, the representative of war, "horrid war," in the Senate, de- 
clared in a speech at Syracuse, New York, October 2t», 1859: 

•'I telfyon, fellow-citizena, tlie Harper's Ferry outbreak was the legitimate consequence of the 
teacliin^s of the llepubiican party." 

Sir, that is the truth, and it is a lesson which the Senator sought to inculcate ; 
■which every traitor who meditated the dissolution of the Union and the depriva- 
tion of the slave-owners of the South of the protection and guarantiee which that 
inrtrnment gave to their j)roperty — it was a lesson leading to an |ict which they all 
medi^ated. Sir, what can we think of a man who so boldly and defiantly announ- 
ces it? Tliere was a murderous and treasonable laid by John Brown upon the 
Commonwealth of Virginia, carrying blood and violence and treason and crime into 
a peaceful community, fardistantfromhisresidei.ee; and the Senator avows that 
this act was the legitimate result of the teachings, as every bo ly knows ti;ai it wa?, 
of the Republican party. 

Mr. WiJ^SON. Will the Senator allow me a word? 

Mr. DAVIS. I [)refer you to wait until 1 get through. 

Mr. WILSON. I wish simply to say that the records of the Senate show that 
that statement is not correct. I never made any such assertion. Mr. Ilv.ater once 
brought it up in the Senate, and I referred to the speech which I actually made, in 
■which I stated precisely the opposite doctrine. ■ ' 

Mr. DAVIS. I accept the Senator's explanation. I withdraw that ciiarge; bat 
1 will bring up another, and see what answer he will make to that. 

On the 20th day of November, 1859 — 

"A large an'l enthusiastic meetinc? of the citizens of this town [Natick, XlMsactiuoettB] ■»;<!< 
called to consiOer the following resolutona ; 

'•"Whereas resistance l<> tyrants is obi-ilienoe to Qod ; Therefore, 

" Renolved, That it is the hijrlient duty of the slaves to resist their ma-ters ; and it is the right 
and duty <.f the people of the North to incite slaves to resistance and aid iliera in it." 

My information is that that Senator 'was present at this meeting when this reso- 
lution passed, and that it pa.«sed iicmine conlradicext'', and the Senator's vyice was 
not rai-'cd in remonstrance against the atrocity of the sentiment expressed in that 
resolution. 

Mr. WILSON. Does the Senator wish an explanation now* 

Mr. DAVIS. Is it any denial? 

Mr. WILSON. I have to pay simply this: that was n meeting called by some 
anti-slaverj' men whom we denominate in our eouijtry as tiie " Garrison abolitiot- 
ists." Some seven or eight hundred persons went to the meeting as lookere-on, and 
did not vote or disturb the meeting, or take any par t in it. Probably not ovei 
seven or eight men voted on that re^oi'ition. or had any pair, in it. Not one in 
t'wei'.ty of those who weio present liad any sympaliiy wiiii the meetii:g; but it wae 
a meeting called by other persons, and they did not wish to interfere with it. My 
own views were fully expressed at t!i ■ time in a letter denying any sympathy ^aV 
it whatever, and in condemnation of it. 

Mr. DAVIS. 1 accept the Senator's explanation ; but I think he was at a very 
improper place, and in very bad company. [Laughter.] 

Now, Mr. Presjilent, I will eay ore word as to ne^ro insurrections, and in relatior 



30 

to the policy of the Government in arming and organizing negro soldiers. I have 
some knowledge of negro nature. I have studied it from my infanc}-. I know of 
no people that have kinder or more benevolent feelings toward a race whom they 
deem to be their inferiors than have the slavehoMero of Kentuckj- toward iheir 
slaves. I know of no slaveholder who would not imperil his life if it were neces- 
sary to defend his slave from wrong and violence. If to support this war in its just 
and proper conduct in the proper mode of carrying it on, slavery had fallen as a 
necessar}' consequence, I know of no man in the State of Kentucky who i.s for the 
Union that would have made any complaint. It would have presented itself to 
them in this aspect: here is an alternative, the preservation of th*^ Union or the 
overthrow of slavery ; and my colleague of the other House, who owns about two 
hundred slaves, and every slaveholder in the State who is a Union man, would have 
yielded his slaves just as he would any of his other property, to the exigencies of 
the war and to the just demands of the Government in carrying it on. All that we 
a.'ked was that slaves should share the fate of other propertj- in this war; that the 
war should not be carried on for their defense nor for the destruction of the insti- 
tution. We believed that all policy to make slaves a component part of the Army 
would result disastrously to the Government and to the country, and I have no 
doubt whatever that this has proved true. But we protested ap.d will continue to 
protest against making war upon the property of loyal people. 

Mr. President, 1 know the nature of slaves, of that population. There have been 
contemplated slave insurrections in Virginia; some in the State of Kentuckj'. "We 
all know the e.xtent of the outrages that ensued in the insurrection of the slaves of 
San Domingo. There is a general law in relation to the white and black races; the 
black race desires the white race; and whenever there is an insurrection consum- 
mated, or suppressed in its embrj-o, the leaders of the insurrection 'generallj' select 
in anticipation for themselves the handsomest and most attractive white women 
for their wives. That is a law of the race; and wherever there is An extensive in- 
surrection, and wolenee and passion and lust obtain the ascendent, the outrageous 
enormities that are and will be perpetrated by the black race are fearful and too 
horrid to narrate. Nevertheless, I will recite one that occurred on the Bayou 
Teche in western Loui.-iana. 

It was communicated to me by a citizen of one of the parishes on tliat bayou, 
a Mr. Carlin, aSjianish creole, a loyal man, a gentleman, a man of intelligence, and 
of as true integritj' to the Government and the Union as there is in it. He had a 
son who had reached the years of manliood. He urged the noble and educated 
youth to take a position in the Army as a private, that he might learn the art of 
war and acquire the capacity for subordinate command. The J'oung man did so. 
He served out his time, and at tlie end his father procured him a second lieutenancy. 
He returned to Virginia to join his regiment and assume his command; but before 
he reached their rendezvous they had left for Gettysburg. He followed on, and 
reached Gettysburg during the protracted conflict. lie shouldered his musket, 
took his position as a private in the ranks, and there poured out his young life, it 
and all the blight hopes of a fond father were offered there upon the altar of his 
country. 

His father narrated to me this fact. There was a Mr. Bossiere, a Creole planter 
on the Bayou Teclie, a man of wealth, of education, and of refinement. He was 
aged, was paralytic, and helpless. The march of armies drove from his neighbor- 
hood all his friend.^, leaving him and his motherless daughter exposed and unpro- 
tected.- A negro soldier wearing the uniform of the United Stales came to this de- 
fenseless house, and there, in the presence of the powerless father, violated the 
person of his daughter. 

Sir, that is one only of the many and untold and most horrid incidents that have 
no doubt characterized this war. Shame and ruin, mute despair, and blasted hopes 
of happiness have silenced the voice forever of most of the victims of such diabolical 
lust. Mr. President, could there be a stronger ease than this appealing to man- 
hood — man the natural protector of woman — to turn from the policy tiiat brings 
such heartrending enoimities? But, sir, such instances as these would be brought 
up in vain to eau>;e to relent the fanatical, fierce, frenzied and perverted hearts and 
souls of the Senators from Massachusetts. At such recitations they would turn with 
the sndonic 6mi!e of fiends from the white woman's direst woe, from t!ie ruin of all 
that is innocent and lovely in the most cultivated and attractive of the sex of the 
white race. 

Alreadj^ it is said that the white population in some of the southern States where 
the negroes have been enlisted are fleeing to places of concealment and satety. The 
negroes know these hiding-places, and the secret ways and paths to them, and they 



31 

are orgauized into the Armj-, and it is boasted tliat they are already upon the hunt 
of their victims. I can fancy the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] in a 
position -where he would feel something of the pride and the glory and honor of wf.r 
according to the scale and dignity of his courage and great soul. It would be as 
Colonel of one of those black regiments, those fiends inflamed by infernal passions, 
and leading them on to hunt out, to murder, or to bring to a fate more horrible than 
murder, these fleeing and helpless women and children. 

But, sir, I have something more to say to that Senator. When I took ray seat in 
this body I found him always the most forward and most reckless assailant of proper- 
ty in negroes. According to his judgment, 1 had the audacity to remonstrate against 
a series of systematic measures which he introduced to assail and destroy that 
property. I did this because of the great interests of my constituents in it, and 
because of the foul injustice and iniquity of the policy generally. I nev^r could say 
a word by way of remonstrance, argument, reason, or expostulation against those 
measures without receiving the coarse and the insulting rebuke of that Senator. 

I recollect on one occasion he called me to order for speaking treasonable words, 
as he assumed. He was required by the occupant of the chair to reduce the words 
to writing. He recited them — I do not recollect whether he reduced them to writ- 
ing or not — but I pronounced the words as he reduced them to writing, or stated 
them, to be untrue and false in fact. He called upon the reporter. The reporter 
read liis report of my words, and it corroborated my version and contradicted that 
of the Senator, and then the matter dropped. 

Sir, the Senator has been a sort of general whipper-in, not only of the Black Re- 
publican party, but of the whole Senate. He has assumed to rebuke, to chide, to 
domineer, to bully Senators at his pleasure, without much regard to their political 
position. Sir, I think there ought to be inscribed on his most impudent front the 
words, "The self-constituted gagger of the Senate." 

Mr. WILSON. I call the Senator to order. 

Mr. DA.VIS resumed: 

On the 5th of January I submitted to the senate a series of resolutions chie£y 
eondemnatory of the abuses and usurpations of power by the Executive of the 
United State?. The member from Massachusetts, on the 8th, moved a resolution 
for my expulsion from the Senate, basing it on the 13th one of my series, which 
came up for consideration on the 31th. That Senator opened the debate by read- 
ing a speech in support of his resolution. I do not know who wrote the speech for 
him, but the Senate will bear me witness he read it very badly. It was replete 
•with gross personalities and vulgar ribaldry, some specimens of which I will read. 
"Having," says that member, " a reasonable degree of confidence in my own pow- 
ers of endurance, I entered upon the task of reading these resolves aimed at the 
President of the United States, the members of his Cabinet, the majority of theee 
Chambers, the laws of Congress, the proclamations and orders of the Commander- 
in-chief of our army, and of all who are clothed with authority to administer the 
Government of the United States. I groped through the mass of vituperative aoc\> 
sations with mingled emotions of indignation and pity." 

"In this farrago of spleen and malice, the Chief Magistrate, his associates and 
supporters, struggling to preserve the life of the nation, are accused, arraj'ed, and 
condemned." 

"Tlie Senator must not trifle here. He must recollect that' he is in the Senate of 

• the United States, and not at a barbecue in Kentucky. Senators cannot fail here 

to comprehend the import' and meaning of the words and phrases introduced in the^e 

resolutions, and they know that these are not the words and phrases of statesmen, 

but of babbling fools." * 

These are a few specimens of the spirit and scurrilous language in which the 
member from Massachusetts opened his attack upon me. I replied at considerable 
length, not only endeavoring to defend myself, but to carry tlie war into Afriea. 
The Senator rejoined, and after this manner: 

" Mr. President: It is not my purpose to notioe in detail the illogical, rambling, and incoherent 
vtterunces that the Senate has been forced to listen to lor near "three hours. Seldom has the 
Senate of the United States been compelled to listen to such a farrago of bmiality, iiideoenojf. 
treason, and faltehood." ••He (the Senator from Kentucky) rises here iu the benate of lb* 
tfnited States, flippantly spealts of States and public men, bringing against fS tales and public, 
men false and vituperative accusations, on authority of what he has heard and wliat hr has be*n 
informed, swift to accuse, fierce, bitter, and uureleutiag in denunciation, reckless alike of facto 
*>ai should govern luynorabU men,'' &c. 

He then proceeds to charge me with having violated the proprieties that govern 
hoHcrabU men and gentlem^fK What does that memb-i. know of these propriitief^ 



82 

When did he ever practice them? He speaketb of things of which he knoweth 
nothing. 

In my reply to that member I alluded to the fact that on the day of (he first 
battle of Bull Run he was applied to by the father of a gallant young soldier, who 
had fallen mortally wounded, to aid him to get the son off the field, and that he 
declined to render any assistance. In his rejoinder the Senator from Mass;ichusetts 
turned to mo and asked this question : "Did the Senator manufacture that libelous 
accusation?" I answered, "It was told me by a soldier." He added: "The Sen- 
ator was told so. Sir, whoever told the Senator so told him an unmitigated and 
unqualified lie, that had not a semblance or shadow of truth in it." 

Sir, the soldier who related that incident to me was Major McCook, deceased, late 
a paymaster in the service of the United States, and the ifather of General Alexan- 
der McCook and brothers, all of them having joined the array, and two having 
fallen in the service. I am informed, on good authority, that he communicated 
the same fact to several gentlemen in this eity when he brought back the re- 
mains of his son. Will the member from Massachusetts, in the presence of the 
Senate, deny that he knew on the day, and after the repulse of our army that 
young McCook was lying dangerously wounded near Cenferville, or somewhere 
betwe<^n the battlefield and the fortifications around Washington City? Will he 
deny that he saw McCook, the father, on that day ? Will he deny that that father 
requested him to give assistance in getting his son into an ambulance or some other 
conveyance, and that he declined, saying that he " had a wife and children to care 
for," or words to that effect? Whatever that Senator may answer to those special 
interrogatories, Mnjor McCook stated the fact to me, and I have no doubt to many 
others, not in confidence, but publicly, and in terms of reproach to the member 
from Massachusetts. That soldier and father is now in his grave, but when living 
his life was illustrated by spotless truth and honor, and his statement of any fact 
could not be shaken by any denial or asseveration of the living Senafor from Mas- 
sachusetts.* 

The word of that Senator stands discredited in the public journals of the country. 
In March, 1862, he entered into a debate in the Senate, in which he took ground in 
favor of discontinuing further recruiting, and for the discharge of 150,000 soldiers 
from the army. The New York Herald published a summary of his remarks at the 
time. Some month.« afterwards that Senator made a speech at Newton, in which 
he was reported to have said in reference to this sj-nopsis of his speech in the Sen- 
ate: "There is not only no truth, but there is not a shadow of truth on which to 
to lay the foundation of the assertion." "I have always maintained that Govern- 
ment wanted more men. So much, Mr. Chairman, in explanation of the false posi- 
tion which the New York Herald has sought to place lae in, and which other pa- 
pers have echoed." These two denials of the Senator are very similar, and equally 
positive; hut as to the latter the Herald nails that Senator to the counter, by quot- 
ing from his speech these words: 

Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts— T/te Senator from Maine the other day proposed to reduce 
the nmnber of men authorized hy law dvicn to five hundred thousand. I agree icith him in 
that. Still we liave nut been able to do it. It teas sug(/eKtrd aluo that we aught to stop re- 
cruiting. I agree to that. J have onr and oner again been to the War Office and urged 
■upon the department to stop recruiting in every part of the country. We huvi- had ilie prom- 
ise that it shmiM be done, yet every day, in difrert-nt parts of the country, wo have accounts of 
men bein? raised an<l brought forth to "fill up the ranks of regiments. The papers tell us that 
in Tennessee and other jiart.s of the country where our armies move, we are ttdinii tip the ranks . 
of the army. I beli ve ?re have to day one hundred and ft ty thousand more men under the 
j>ay of the Government than we need or can well iise. t have not a dou'4 of it; and I think 
it ought to be che<:kei. I think the War Department ought to issue per emptor ii orders for- 
J'idding the enHntment of another soldier into the volunteer force of the United States until 
tlie lime sliall come when wc need them. We can obtain them any time when we need them. 
— Washington Globe, March 29, 1862, part 2, page 1,417. 

*A gentleman of the higcbest character for truth, integrity, and honor, has given me this in- 
formation, lie went out from Wasliin^ton to the neighborhood of Bull Kun on the day of the 
first lattle In the vicinity of (Y-nterville he came upon Major McCook, now deceased, who 
informed him ihal \\\» son, a youth, had been overtaken by some rebel cavalry in an adjoining 
field, who required him to surrender, and he answering that he would not, th y had fired at 
and wounded him; and he had gotten him over the fence into the road. That Senator Wilson, 
of Massachusetts, had just passed along, and being requestetl by him to assist him to get his 
son into a house rear by that he might be cared for. This he refused, saving that he had a 
wife and children, and must take care of himself, and hurried on but w.as st II in view. McCook 
*poke of the matter with a goo<l deal of feeling against Wilson. This gentleman then helped 
McCook to place his son in the house, and afterwards into a wagon, which started for Washing- 
ton, bui belore it reaeh>-d its destination he died. The name of tliis gentleman is Dr. J. J. 
Jones, of Louisiana, at present sojourning in this city. I have seen no one who has been able to 
inform me, wlieiher the time of the member from Massachusetts, when he hurried away from the 
dying young soldier for Washington, wi\9 equal to " Flora Temple's" best 



33 

But I concede I was misinformed, and erred in my reply to the Senator, as to tbe 
order of some facts in his military career, which it is very important should be cor- 
rectly recorded in history. He informs iis, and no doubt truly, that it was not 
hefore, but after the first battle of Bull Run, that he raised a regiment in Massa- 
ehujetts. That his earliest visit to the field was some two days after the battle of 
Blackburn's Ford, and very shortly before the battle of Bull Run, and close by. 
He had heard that some Massachusetts soldiers had been wounded, and repaired 
to their camp to nurse them. A very praiseworthy object, and it being impossible 
to suppose that he had less fitness for it than his present engagements, he should 
have continued to nurse the soldiers. He does not deny that after he had raised 
his regiment a grand pageant was got up on Boston common, in honor of it and 
himself; and to stimulate his warlike ardor, a very eloquent and stirring address 
was made to him by one of the most accomplished orators, not only of Boston, but 
America. He no doubt struggled and swelled to mate himself in his reply to the 
grandeur of the occasion, and the eloquence of the other speaker. We have all 
heard how the celebrated Capt. Bobadil proposed to use up with a few men a very 
large opposing army. I suppose that his work was tame and slow compared with 
the rapid and wholesale destruction with which the hero of Natick proclamated to 
overwhelm all rebeldom. Near the clo*e of his third speech against me, the Sena- 
tor brought into this Chamber "Canterbury Hall," and spoke of the introduction 
oi & farce upon its boards. Now, I suggest to the Senator, that if he will advertise 
for some particular evening when he will present himself on the Canterbury's 
boards, to recite his Boston common's war speech, and will belt himself again to 
that long sword, and take a few preliminary turns on the front part of tlie stage, 
with his'martial strut of eighteen inches a pace, accompanied by his peculiar hitch 
and jerk, and will then give his reading of the "speech, suiting the action to the 
word, according to his own conception, he will have not only the largest audience, 
but will produce the baldest andflatest farce that has ever yet signalized Canterbury, 
or any other boards. 

The neophite Colonel started from Boston for the seat of war by this eity, with 
the most redundant stock of courage that warrior ever took aboard; but it ebbed 
in a geometrical ratio as he approximated the enemy, and even before he reached 
Wasliington, the last vestage of it was gone. He had been close to the battle ol 
Bull Run, and the breeze had then wafted to his olfactories the odor of " villianous 
Baltpetie." He had heard the thunders of battle and seen its murky incense offered 
up to Mare. When he got near to its scene, instinctive dread came over him, and 
it was reproduced to his memory and imagination like a terrible apparition. 1 
heard a member of the other House, from South Carolina, announce in stento- 
rian voice that he was born a stranger to fear; one of his colleagues immediately 
eaid to me, "I was not born exactly there, but in that neighborhood." The mem- 
ber from Massachusetts was born far away from both localities, and had no stomach 
to go back to Bull Run again. He consequently doffed his sword and eagles, but 
had none of the fussy pomp with which he had assumed them; and when, or how, 
or where they became separated, no one but a few of the initiated ever knew. 

Throughout, his three speeches against me, the member from Maseachusettsmade 
•onstant proffer of himself as a born and practiced scavenger. In the third one he 
compared me to a fractious little wife who very much berated her husband, and on 
its being brought to his attention, he remarked, it seemed to do the little thing a 
great deal of good, but himself no hurt^ He would never be suspected of being 
that husband, in whose conduct there was a forbearance ard decorum that he could 
never bt^ supposed to be able to approach. In his rejoinder to my reply, he char- 
acterized it as "the twitterings of a cock snowbird." That member had never been 
associated in ray mind with the idea of a bird; if the fact had been otherwise, it 
•would doubtle.*-s have been some most unclean bird. But I will tell him what did 
come up sfiontaiieously in my mind when I looked upon him. It was "Jeremiah 
Leathers," alias "Jeremiah Colb^ith," alias "Henry Wilson." He denounced me as 
" pro-slavery drunk," intimated that I was frightened by his resolution for my expui- 
eion,and allud«d to my "uourage oozing out of ray fingers' ends," and also that it was 
with me as with FalstaflT, " discretion being the better part of valor." I think that 
member must himself be about convinced that he has neither valor nor discretion^ 
It has been eaid that Bob Acres' courage oozed out of his fingers' ends. The Senator 
denied that he run from the battle of Bull Run, admitted that he walked several 
miles, and says he was then taken up by a friend in bis buggy. I have no doubt 
^that in that three or four miles he did the tcUlest u>alfcing and made the best time of 
the war; and that what courage he had bad previously, oozed out at some other 
place than his fingers' ends; and when he crossed the Potomac, he was a fitter sub 
2 ^ 



34 

ject to be laved in that river than was the dirty soldier of the Peninsula in the 
Gaudiana. 

He dared me lo read my series of resolutions at the head of any regiment in the 
army, and said if I attempted it I would be hung on the highest tree. Well, T will 
make this proposition to the Senator. Let him get from his master at the White 
House, an order that he, or anj- other, or as many other of their champions as they 
may select, and I, shall have safe conduct to all our armies, and the soldiers shall 
have perfect liberty to listen to a discussion of those resolutions by us, and to form 
their free and independent judgment and action upon them, and I will risk the 
hanging. I have confidence in the citizen soldiery of the United States, in their 
devotion to the Constitution and the rights and liberties which it guaranties to 
them. The member pronounces a foul libel upon them when he says, that if I were 
to appear before them to plead that great cause, of my-self, of them, of our countrj-- 
meii, and of mankind, that the}' would murder me for attempting to bear an hum- 
ble part in the great work of their restoration. 

But wliilst the mind of the member is running upon hazzaidous undertakings, I 
will make this proposition to him: let iiim go to Kentucky, and there set up his 
negro-stealing operations, denounce the fugitive slave laws of Congress in the gross 
and treasonable languaaje which he so often uses in this Chamber, and organize and 
mtichinate to defeat their execution, as he has long been doing in Massachusetts, 
and what fate would await him? He would be consigned to the penitentiary and 
put to work in a cobbler's stall. His crin)es would make him infamous The'labor 
would be only to fill up his time and to mitigate his punisliment by diverting his 
thoughts from the unbroken contemplation of tiie guilt of his soul. Tlie people of 
Kentucky honor labor and laborers. That class, in every country, constitute mainly 
its physical and moral strength, and its greatest glory. A laborer of plain good 
sense, morals and principles, of proper sensibilities and deference to others, and of 
uprig.it and decorous walk in life, is one of the truest of gentlemen, and there are 
millions of them among our countrymen. They are so estimated by all the people 
of Kentucky, and their regret is fchat a merciful administration of criminal justice 
requires that felons in their punishment should be allowed to dishonor labor. 

As that Senator spoke his speech in this Chamber, he anniineiated that nine tenths 
of the people of the loyal States, including Kentucky, would condemn my resolu- 
tions; but, in the Globe, he changed it to "an overwhelming majority." By what 
authority does he speak on this or any other point for the hjyal States generally, 
and particularly for Kentucky ? He has but one warrant, and that is his unequaled 
assurance. He is a most rapid census-taker on this subject, but I think it will turn 
out that he is yet more false. 

In one of his three speeches there is this passage: "But the Senator from Ken- 
tucky reproaches Massachusetts for her legislation intended to protect her own citi- 
zens against the inhuman provisions of that fugitive slave law, whose provisions so 
gladden his heart and fill his capacious brain. The Senator mounts his desk and 
reads to the Senate that infamous enactment that has brought so much shame and 
dishonor upon our country in the face of the Christian and civilized world." So 
gi-eat is one of the infirmities of the member that he cannot relate truly an incident 
occurring in his own presence, and of the Senate. Being fatigued, I reclined on 
my desk. It was not my dexk, but the Senator /j/msc//' that I mounted. 

His third speech appears in the Globe materially changed, and a good deal im- 
proved from what it was as he delivered it. Some superior workman to himself 
has certainly been pruning and polishing it down. He assumed that I had warped 
away from my resolutions, and then added: "I say with these modifications and 
xileuials, the resolutions become simply a farce, one that they would be a-^hamed to 
put upon the boards at Ganterburij Hall. The whole country will launch its gibes 
and its jeers at them. They are nothing, and they mean nothing. ' Revolt does not 
mean revolt.' The taking'of Government into your owr hands does not mean it. 
Calling a National Convention to exercise this power does not mean anything only 
a pamphlet, and some oW AMwAer nominated for President to be beaten. 'A sub- 
sidized army' is not a subsidized army. I do not know that the negro janazaries 
are to be denied. I suppos' these colored troops stand as negro Janazaries. But, 
sir, I accept all these disclaimer.-". I do not saj' that the Senator in drafting them 
■was very brave, and that as he comes before the Senate and country with them his 
knees smote together, or that his courage oozed out of his fingers' ends; but cer- 
tainly I think the Senator has taken FalstafF's advice, that 'discretion is the better 
part of valor.' The resolutions, as / say they mean nothing, are nothing, and be- 
come a mere farce, and /drop them and withdraw the resolution." * 

Mr. President, the member from Massachasetts is fortified by a cordon of impfl- 



35 

dence and mendacity that make liirn impregnable and unapproachable. He, him- 
self, fabricates modifications, denials, and explanations of my resolutions in general 
and indefinite terms, fahehj imputes them to mc, and declares that he accepts them, 
and then withdraws the reeolnfion for my expulsion. 

I will read from the Congressional Globe what occurred in theSenate on the 8th 
January when the member from Massachusetts moved my expulsion: 

"Mr. WILSON. Mr. President, I rise for the purpose of submitting a resolution of a personal 
nature. I find on my desk a series of resolutions introduced into the Senate on the 5th instant by 
the Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. Davis] Those resolutions class the Government and its sup- 
porters 

'•The VI^E PRESIDENT. The Senator will first submit his resolution. 

"Mr. WIL«ON Very well; I submit my resolution. 

"The VICE PRESIDENT. The resolution will be read for the information of the Senate. 

"The Secretary read the resolution, as follows : 

"Whereas the Hon. Gakrktt Davis, a Senator from the State of Kentucky, did on the 5th day 
of January, A. D. 1S64, introduce into the Senate of the United States a series of resolutions 1b 
■which, among other things, it is declared that ' the people North ought to revolt against their war 
leaders and take this great matter into their own hands,' thereby meaning to incite the people of 
the United States to revolt against the President of the United States and those in authority who 
support him in the proscution of the war to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and the 
Union, and to take the prosecution of the war into their own hands: Therefore, 

^'^Be it resolved. That the said Garrett Davis has, by the introduction of the resolutions afore- 
said, been guilty of advising the people of the United States to treasonable, insurrectionary, and 
rebellious action against the Government of the United States, and of a gross violation of the privi- 
leges of the Senate; for which cause he is hereby expelled. 

"The PRESIDING OFFICER, (Mr. Anthony in the chair.) Will the Senate give unanimous 
consent for the consideration of the resolution at the present time ? 

"Mr. WILSON. I do not propose to call it up for action at the present time, but I intend to do 
so at. some time hereafter, for I desire to record my vote upon it. I have offered this resolution 
without consultation with any r*enator, on my own responsibility. Often I heard the men who or- 
ganized this treasonable rebellion threaten the dissolution of the Union, and make treasonable 
appeals to the country, and when this bloody revolution opened I resolved that if I ever heard in 
this 1 hamber more treasonable utterances, I would move the expulsion of the Senator uttering 
words of treason. These are not words uttered in debate, but they arein the Senators resolutions. 
He ;ells the people, he asks the Senate to tell the people of the country, the loyal men of the North 
and the rebels of the South, to revolt; yes, sir, to revolt against their war leaders, to take affairs 
into their own hands, to elect delegates to a national convention, to stop the war. No proposition 
was ever made in the Senate of the United Slates, not even liy the c<inspirators who organized this 
slaveholder's rebellion, more unconstitutional^ seditious, and rebellious. If«be people follow his 
advice, if they revolt against the Iresident, I'ongress, the Supreme Cnurt, the 'war leaders,' if they 
take the power into their own hands, if they go into national convention, a convention unknown to 
the Constitution and the laws, assume authority to close the war, and adjust the terms of peace in 
defiance of the Government o) the United .states, war, civil war, is inevitable, and the loyal States 
will be j>lunged into the fire and blood of internal strife. Stripped of its verbiage, the Senator's 
proposition means this, nothing less. 

" Mr. DAVI.S. Mr. President, the resolution of the Senator from Massachusetts presents a gar- 
bled version of my resolution. It does not embody my resolution so as to express its sense; and 
the inferences that that Senator draws from it are not authorized by its language or its spirit. Sir, 
what did that honorable Senator admit within the las-t two years? lie admitted that when his own 
State was in a state of rebellion against' the TJnited States, he sympathized with that rebellion. 

"Mr. WILSON No, sir 

"Mr. DAVI.S. I think the Senator did. Mr. WILSON. No, sir 

" Mr. DAVIS. I interrogated that Senator and his colleague in relation to their course and sym- 
pathies in the Burns case that occurred in Boston .-oine years ago. 'The galled jade winces:' 'my 
withers are unwruug.' When the gentleman sp'-aks of treasonaud disloyalty to his Government, 
he speaks from the recesses of his own heart, not mine. 

" lie puts his own interpretation on th(i resolut on that I offered. That resolution I abide by; 
but I deny that its authorizes the conclusion the Senator from Massachusetts is forcibly trying to 
deduce from it; far from it. It however strikes the Senator on this point: he is Jiere an advocate 
for the interference of the military power at elections, to destroy iheir freedom, and to appoint to 
office by the bayonet instead ol the free suffrages of ihe people. Now, my resolution — its jiurport, 
its meaning, its spirit— is, that the people shall rise at the polls and take the power of this Govern- 
ment and of this country, that properly belongs to them, there, at that constitutional forum, into 
their own liands, by peaceful convention ; that the people North and the people »outh shall both do 
it, and repudiate th-ir war leaders— leaders who desire a continuance of this terrible struggle, and 
who are opposed to its peaceful settlement. Sir, I give iherh that counsel in the resolution com- 
plained of; I give them that counsel here everywhere. The thought of mutiny or disaffection in 
the Army was not in my mind. Mow is it with the Senator? It I recollect aright, he stated that 
his'svmpathies were with Burns in the Massachusetts insurrection. 

'•Mr. WILSON. Never. 

"Mr. DAVIS. Were you against his rescue? 

"Mr, WILSON. I had nothing to do with it; and had no knowledge of it until after it trans- 
pired. I was not in ray own State at the time. 

".Mr. DAVIS. Did you ever condemn that insurrection? Did you ever da anything to put it 
down-its spirit? 

" Mr. WILSON. There was no occasion ; it was put down quickly. 

" Mr. DAVIS. Did you ever do or say anything to assert the authority of the laws and of the 
United States in that insurrection? Did you ever express any c(!ndemnation of it ? No, sir; no. 

"Mr H.VKLAN. Mr. I'resident, I rise to a question of order. I desire to know if there is any 
svy^ect before the Senate. 

"The PRESIDING OFFI'Ell. There is no subject IjCfore the Senate. The Senator from Mas- 
sachusetts did not ask for the present consideration of his resolution. 

" Mr. H AKLAN. I move then that the Senate do now adjourn. [' Oh, no ! '] " 



36 

lb id thus seen that at the moment when the resolution for my expulsion was 
sprung in the Senate bv the member from Massachusetts, I charged him with garb- 
ling that resolution of my series on which he based his, and giving an unaulhor- 
ized and false interpretation to mine. I protested that neither its language or 
spirit meant any appeal to violence, or any other remedy than a peaceable conven- 
tion to be elected by the people of all the'States, north and south. 

On the 11th January, I called up the resolution of expulsion, and at my instance 
it was made the special order for the ISth. 

On tiie 13th of January I again called up the resolution, when the Senator from 
Massachusetts read his opening speech. I replied, and he rejoined ; and then the 
subject was postponed until the morrow. On the 18th of January I again called 
up the resolution, when it was referred by the Senate to the judiciary committee, 
which on the 25th reported it back, asking to be discharged from its consideration 
Thereupon I moved to make it the specal order for the morrow, when it came up. 
Mr. Howard (of Michigan) rose in its support. Before he proceeded, I asked his 
courtesy to permit the Secretary to read a note which I had addressed to the chair- 
man of the judiciary eommittee, in ttese words: 

'' Washington Crrs, Jcmuai'y 20, 1864. 

' Sir : I was taken wholly by surprise at the presentation of the resolution to expel me from the 
Senate. I had not expected, or even thought of the resolution which was made ibe ground of that 
proceeding, or any one, or the whole -of the series producing any such mov^menL I therefore 
avowed, in substance, distinctly, thnt the mover of the resolution for niy expulsion interpreted the 
resolution on which he based bis erroneously and injuriously to me. Tliat in offering those resolu- 
tions I had no purpose to invite the the Ariiiy to mutiny, or the people to sedition, or any violence 
whatever; but it was to exhort the whole pe()ple. North and South, to terminate the war' by a con 
stitutional settlement of their difficulties and reconstruction of the Union; and that the series of 
resolutions would not fairly admit of any other construction ; all of which I now reaffirm. 

'• I am prompted to make this disavowal again, in this form, to place it upon the records of the 
Senate, it having as yet only appeared in the reports of its debates. And with this note, which I 
request you to lay be'ore the committee, I submit the case on my part to its action. 

"Tours, &c.. ^ GAKUETT DAVIS. 

"The Chaiuman o/ */(« Committee on the, JwJicinry of the Stncite. 

" Nfr. HOWARD. Mr. President, the temper exhibited in the letter of the honorable member 
from Kentuoky just read from tlie Chair seems to indicate certainly to my ramd a regret that his 
resolutions havH placed him in this unpleasant predicament; and I desire now to say to the Sena 
tor from Kentucky t»at, if such be the fact, and he desir>-s leave to withdraw the resolutions which 
are the foundation of the resolution of the Senator from Mnssachusetts for his expulsion, I shall 
certainly lie very happy to grant him the leave so far as I am concerned, and I presume that will 
be the univi-rsiil sense of the Senate. 

"Mr. DAVIS. The Si^nator from Michigan has paused, I suppose, that I may respond to bis 
suggestion, (which being assented to by him) I added, having declared generally "the meaning of 
those resolutions. I adhere to them. I will never withdraw them, never, never. 

"Mr. HOWARD. Under the circumstances, sir, before proceeding with the remarks which I 
had intended to make upon this subject, I will offer an amendment to the resolution of the Sen- 
ator fri>m Massachusetts, which I now si-nd to the ChHir. 

"The VICE PRESIDENT. The amendment will be read. 

"The Chief clerk read the amendment, which was to strike out of the resolution the word " ex- 
pelled," and insert in lien thereof the words "censured bv the Senate." 

"The VICE PRESIDENT. The question will be on agreeing to the amendment." 

The Senator moved to substitute censure for erpuhion, and made an elaborate 
speech. 

I have exhibited all the modificatimis, denials, and disclaimers which I made, and 
wliich the member from Massachusetts says so far mollified him as to move him to 
withdraw his resolution of expulsio.n. It is. shown that mj' modifications, drniah, 
and disclaimers were simply a denunciation of him for having //a>7;/trf mj' resohdio7i 
and given it a false &nA Jforced interpretation ; and a ]irotest, that neither its spirit 
or lanc/uage would authorize his conclusions; that the one on which he based his 
resolution (->f expulsion, or an}-, or all the series, did not invite to any mutiny of the 
ami}', sedition of the people, ov other violent remedy for the public abuses and 
wrongs which I denounced. I disclaimed both the fact and the intention of recom- 
mending any remedy of violence and revolution, and avowed the potent and 
B )ecific one. a national convention of all tlie States. 

I assumed distinctly this ground, and the whole of it, at the moment when the 
Senator first launched his charge against me. If it was such a surrender by me, as 
he now claims it to be, why did he not accept it when it was made, and then ask to 
withdi'aw his resolution of expulsion? Why did he continue to press it, and per- 
mit it to remain before the Senate for twenty days longer, cons'imincr its time and 
obstructing the public business? Two Senators [Mr. Howard of Michigan, and Mr. 
Morrill of Maine] came to his assistance in the debate. Messrs Johnson of Mary- 
Isind, IIalk of New Hampshire, Lank of Indiana, Fkssende.n of Maine, ANXiioxi^of 
Rhode Island, and Fcster of Connecticut, in debate, opposed the movement against- 
me. The Senator had boasted on the introduction of his resolution, that it was his 



37 

own act, and without consultation with a eingle Senator. On the 2'7th January, 
the fact was revealed to him that in the demise of his resolution he would be nearly 
ic as lean a minority as he was at its birth. It was then that the instinctive m^g- 
nanimiti/ of & little,'malicpiant &ud cowardly spirit asserted its dominion over him, 
and he determined to withdraw it. * lie came into the Senate the next day with the 
deliberate and final purpose to withdraw it: he rose for that object; had the base- 
ness to uttpr against me another of his seullionly speeches, and at its close did 
-withdraw it. This was done with the unanimous concurrence of the Senate, 
the body being satisfied that the movement should never have been made. But 
that Senator, in the plenitude of his arrogance, seems almost unconscious that he 
had obtruded this matter upon the Senate, and thereby made it their business ; and 
he treats it as his own personal affair, and the Senate as the machinery with which 
l\o was managing it according to his own will and pleasure. "/ acc^'pi these dis- 
claimers." "/say, then, they (my resolutions) wfaji ?(o</(m//, are noihhiff, and be- 
come a mere farce. 1 drop them and withdraw the resolution." Brainless and impu- 
dent simpleton ! to suppose that he was regarded or thought of in the matter at all, 
»;xcept so far as he was constantly obtruding himself upon the attention of the 
Senate. Had he been silent, he would soon have been forgotten. 

But, as he had his third speech printed in the Congressional Globe, he dropped 
out (itf it " Canterbury Hall," and "some old hunker candidate for the presidency" 
he changed into "some respectable conservative." But that Senator having brought 
Canterbury Hall into this Chamber, he shall not give so summary and quiet an 
exit to it. I have heard of a great many respectable people, members of Congress, 
soldiers, strangers and citizens patronizing that theatre; and the most damaging 
fact against its respectabilitj' that had reached my ears, is, that the member from 
Massachusetts was one of its patrons. I have no doubt that curiosity and assurance 
propelled him occasionallj' into the boxes, but, from his reputation, that his distinc- 
tive tastes generally prompted him to seek more congenial company, of both sexes 
aad colors, in the upper gallery. But were I to make a suggestion on this point to 
the managers of the Canterbury, it would be, that they improve the respectability 
of their establishment by excluding him from it wholly, pit, boxes, and gallaries. 

But my appeal to the body of the people of all the States, North and South, to 
meet in National Convention and stop this bloodj' and desolating war, and to re- 
establish the great principles of concession and compromise, and the powers, rights, 
liberties and privileges reserved to the people and States respectively, upon which 
Washington and his associates had based bur blended system of National and State 
Governments, is what appals the member from Massachusetts. The thought of such 
a movement makes him rave like a mad dog in the presence of water. In his 
phrenzy he declares that the assembling of such a convention would be treason, 
horrid treason; and if it should attempt to exercise any powers belonging to the 
Government of the United States, it wovdd be the duty of the President to arrestt 
to imprison! to try! to convict! to condemn! and hang! the members of that convention 
for treason! Blood and thunderl what a swelling climax of military justice, mov- 
ing along in all its dread and stately steps, and the whole to be performed by one 
public functionary, and in punishment of the exercise of the iindoubted right of the 
sovereign power of the country, the people of the United States, to perform the 
greatest and most beneficient act within the competency of mortals. The people of 
ail the States, calling a convention to represent their unlimited political sovereignty 
and power, and one of the most base and puny of presidential tools hurling against 
it such senseless threats! It associates the groveling courtier calling upon Canute 
tc say to the sea, "thus far shall thy proud waves come but no farther." The om- 
nipotent people, when they will it, can put up and pud down presidents, institu- 
tions, and governments. All are of their creation, and live and move by their suf- 
ferance, and obey their behests, when they are true to themselves. The government 
officials are their servants, not their masters. Such is the theory and the condition 
of practical constitutional liberty. The work of restoration and reconstruction can 
only be performed by the great agency of a National Convention. It is equally 
necessary for the North and the South. It must clear away the vast mass of debris 
and rubbish that the rebels, and the destructives, who hold power, have heaped 
upon our entire-system, and reconstruct and restore the Federal Constitution and 
laws of Congress, and the State constitutions and laws, the entire Government and 
the Union as they were. If the people prove unequal to this w6rk their destiny is 
certain ; it is a military despotism and a master. 

[Note. — The portion of this speech between the point where Senator Wilson 
called me to order and here, was cut off by his question of order being sustained. 
He had been permitted to pour out upon me falsehood and scurrility in three long 
speeches without interruption. G. D.] 



. 38 

After being called to order by Senator "Wilson*, and the question of order being sus- 
tained by the Senate, Mr. DAVIS resumed: 

Mr. President, I will forego the further personal notice which I had intended to 
take of the .Senator from Massachusetts. I felt that I had an account to settle with 
him, and it was my purpose to have a full fettlferaent; but I acquiesce in the judg- 
ment of the Senate, and I will now proceed to the legitimate conclusion of my speech, 
the terms of which 1 suppose will be literally in order. Before which 1 will set the 
Senator fi'om Wisconsin [Mr. Doolittle] right on a few points of fact. The Senator 
from Massachusetts opened the debate on the resolution for my expulsion in a writ- 
ten speech, full of personal invectives and coarse abuse. I replied at length, but 
made no other speech. The Senator immediately rejoined, yet more oft'er.sively. 
Some days afterward the Senator withdrew his resolution, but, before doing so, 
made another speech fraught with gross personalities. I had prepared a summary 
from the Senator's speeches of his many attacks upon me personally, atid intended to 
square the account. The Senate have cut me off from that privilege, and I tliink 
have done me injustice; but I must submit to its judgment, and will conclude my 
remarks. 

Mr. President, the people of Massachusetts, as a whole, have always been strongly 
marked. Intellectual, energetic, active, latently brave, arrogant, conceited, inquisi- 
tive, meddlesome, not satisfied to manage their own business but ever trjnng to 
take charge of other people's, communicative yet secretive, alert, inventive, covetous, 
selfish, practical in business, Ideal in doctrine, i-ational and skeptical in religion, with 
a moral sense consisting rather of habit than sentiment, swaying from one extreme 
opinion to another, and in all dogmatical, intolerant, fanatical, persecuting, and cruel ; 
and yet her people cherish and hug to their bosom all their peculiarities, though 
many of them are rt'volting deformities. 

It is seen from this sketch that her characteristics are strikingly and extensively 
mixed, giving efticienc}' at the same time for great mischief and great good. Yet 
no State of tiie Union, and few communities of her numbers in any age, have pro- 
duced a laiger aggregate of mind or U)ore numerous or higher specimens of indi- 
vidual men. At the era of the Revolution she gave, not only to the colonies 
but to mankind, Franklin, the Adamses Hancock, Quincy, "Warren, Prescott, and 
Copley; in the succeeding generation, King, John Quincy Adams, Story, and Par- 
sons, Whittimore, Whitney, Bowditch; and at a later day, Everett, Davis, Choate, 
"Winthrop, ^and Gushing, Shaw, Parker, and the Curtises, Hilliard. Hillard, and 
Thomas, Prescott, Bancroft, and Motley.. Longfellow and Bryant, Perkins and Healy, 
Morse, Story the sculptor, and Morton, and a host of others who have shed unfad- 
ing luster not only upon their own names but upon America. High above all of 
them, that product of New Hampshire, and development of Massachusetts, is the 
intellectual giant, Daniel Webster, who, as a constitutional lawyer, Senator, and 
Secretary, is without a peer. In Plato, Bacon, Burke, and "Webster, man made his 
grandest development of pure intellect; while oratory and statesmanship have had 
their highest illustrations in Demosthenes, Cicero, Chatham, and Claj'. 

Massachusetts has had one unadulterated heroic age, commencing with the dawn 
of the troubles of the colonies with the mother country and coming down to the 
adoption of the Federal Constitution. During that eventful period there is no stain 
upon her escutcheon. She was about to act a first and principal part with the other 
colonies in a great political drama, involving not only the destiny of them all, and 
of a continent, but which was to influence materially the woof and color of the 
world's after-history. In mind, enlarged views, and wise statesmanship; in a just 
and true appreciation of her rights and duties, and those of the other colonies; in 
courage, fortitude, wisdom, disinterestedness, and moral principle, she was up to the 
great occasion. She was in singleness possessed of and insjiired by true, noble, 
unselfish, and patriotic purposes, and throughout all the perils and trials of that 
momentous time Massachusetts showed no weakness, bu^alwaj's strength and great- 
ness. She made no mistakes, she conmiitted no crimes, no excesses. Her people 
had the good sense to call for the counsel and guidance of her wise, virtuous, and 
great men, and the fruits were for the colonies nationality and independence, and 
for herself one of the purest and brightest chapters in history. 

Tiie shock of England's oppressive policy for the colonies iirat struck Massachu- 
setts. She at once invoked the aid of the southern colonies, and it was rendered 
not only without hesitation, but with heartiness for a common cause. They knew 
that one fate awaited them all. In the imperishable language of Mr. Webster, 
"Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand to hand they stood 
around the Administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them 
for support." Purified by the bloody ordeal of the long war, and instructed by the 



39 

inefficiency of the Articles of Confederation in peace, tlie Constitution was the pro- 
duct of all the lessons of their experience, of their concessions, ai)d of their har- 
monized counsels. It was the consummatioQ of all their work, the perfection of 
man's statesmansliip. If it were possible for the people of the United States to 
uphold, to guard, and defend it in the same spirit in which it was loimed it would 
be perpetual; the degree of its security will always be proportioned lo the preva- 
leiice of that spirit. 

But after a time Massachusetts swung away from the great political principles 
and ends to which she had so steadily adhered for more than a generation. She 
has since been working with all her charactei-istic activitj-, energy, and audacity for 
the overthrow of that wonderful fabric of government in the building up of which 
she bore so conspicuous a part. She has kept up an incessant attack upon all its 
compromises except those which redound to her own advantage. She has repudi- 
ated all her able and enlightened national men, with their broad and statesmanlike 
views of Conslitution, laws, and policy; she has surrendered to sectionalists, radi- 
cals, and faetionists, to knaves and demagogues, to factitious philanthropists and 
clerical politicians and hypocrites, to men of one idea, and fatally \n-i,t on carrying 
that out, th.ough Constitution and liberty therebj' perish, to mannikins in intellect 
and soul, who are wholly incapable of her wise and good government, or any just 
appreciation of her relations, duties, and obligations both to the United States and 
the other States. She has permitted men, who*^an ruin but not rulf, to make her 
one of the principal architects of the great national ills that are upon us. 

She once garned for herself and the whole country a great crop of imperishable 
glory; but she is now working as efficiently as the southern rebels f r its degrada- 
tion and ruin. When she shall have returned to her old political moorings, to the 
principles and spirit that ruled her when the foundations of our gnvernment were 
laid, and shall have thrown from herself t}\e perverted and deforux-d dwarfs that 
now beset her like a legion of horrible incubuses, and have called back into her 
service her able, patriotic, and virtuous statesmen, the wojk of reunion and recon- 
rtruction will be speedily consummated. For that mighty work then, indeed, woul^ 
Massachusetts be pt)teutial. 



